Solar Mass, featuring former Diocletian members, announced that their debut recording of death/speed metal, Pseudomorphosis, will be released on October 3rd on cassette by Iron Bonehead Productions with the higher-fidelity CD and LP formats to follow afterwards. Iron Bonehead premiered a track, “Weaponised” on Soundcloud while the cover was drawn by Rok of Sadistik Exekution.

We covered Condemner’s Omens of Perdition recently and found quite a bit to like in its death metal stylings. When the band reached out to us for an interview, staff writer Corey M rose to the occasion and spoke with the band members.

PB: I am PB. I play guitar and handle drum programming, song writing, and, thus far, most lyric writing.JH : I am JH and I provide all vocals and bass.

CM: Can you give us a brief history of Condemner? What inspired you to write and play metal?

PB: As an entity, Condemner was formed in October of 2015, but the seeds of it date back to Summer of 2009. At that point, I had been playing guitar for a few years, but everything I wrote was black metal in a harmony-heavy style reminiscent of French bands such as Mutiilation or Haemoth. At the time, I felt that death metal was too limited; I had, incorrectly, perceived it as a sub-genre that was almost entirely focused on immediate facts of what we see in front of us in the world, entirely sacrificing the “spiritual” in the process; focused on the phenomenon, rather than the noumenon, for those who dislike such “religious” descriptions. What changed all of this was seeing Imprecation live for the first time in Summer of 2009. That band’s performances conjure the dark aether in the way that I had only associated with black metal. This revelation, combined with the fact that I felt like my black metal songwriting was a bit overwrought and emotionally overindulgent and needed more discipline, made the path clear to me, and I started writing death metal in the style that you hear on Omens of Perdition. “Reverence Towards the Pernicious Tyrant”, in particular, dates back to these earliest days. Originally, I didn’t have any plans to turn it into an actual band, and was just writing the songs for my own pleasure, with the occasional quick-and-dirty guitar-only recording so I could easily remember my own material, but a friend and mentor in the Texas metal scene who I have the highest respect for told me to turn it into something “real”, and shot down every excuse I made for not doing so, at which point I started learning drum programming, multi-tracking, and the rest of the things that would be required to make a proper recording.

As for what inspired me to write and play metal as opposed to something else entirely — I’m was a hessian before I was a musician, so I was obviously going to write what I love.

JH: I will only speak to my own history in Condemner: I was approached to record vocals on Omens of Perdition in late winter 2015 and took over the bass duties when the individual that was originally going to record bass dropped out of the project. I learned and recorded all of the bass parts on Omens of Perdition in less than a day and completed the vocals a short while later. The demo was digitally released in December and the reception has been very positive in the underground.

The initial inspirations for myself (assuming we’re starting from the beginning) were the usual suspects of ‘80’s Metallica, Slayer, and Sepultura as a teenager which led to bands like Voor and Slaughter (Can.) which led further down the path of death metal, black metal, etc. Inspirations as far as vocal performances for Condemner are Ross Dolan of Immolation, Nick Holmes of (early) Paradise Lost and Chris Gamble of Goreaphobia for their articulation of lower growls. Craig Pillard on the first two Incantation albums was definitely an influence for the demo as well. MkM of Antaeus is always an influence — although I am using my lower range in Condemner instead of my typical higher range, MkM’s intensity is something that resonates with me regardless of which range I am using. Finally, Rok of Sadistik Exekution is an example of the complete primal fury that every metal vocalist should attempt to channel.

CM: Condemner’s lyrics read like actual worship of death as both a real eventual experience and an abstract concept personified by an evil force. Is this on purpose? And if so, how specifically do the lyrics fit with the rest of the music?

PB: This is on purpose, but it’s a means, not an end. Speaking for the three songs I wrote the lyrics to, the key concepts are strictness and severity. Often in death metal, evil and Satan are seen as stand-ins for liberation and freedom, but there’s another side to this coin — not just opposer, but accuser as well. Black Sabbath wrote “Begging mercies for their sins/Satan laughing spreads his wings”, Slayer wrote “Bastard sons begat your cunting daughters/Promiscuous mothers with your incestuous fathers/Engreat souls condemned for eternity/Sustained by immoral observance a domineering deity”, Immolation wrote “Glorious flames… Rise above/Show us pain… And cleanse our world”, and Condemner follows along the same lines, seeing death, evil, and Satan as the whip that justly lashes across the back and the flames that rightly burn the flesh of weak, failing humanity. This is the source of the band’s name, as well as the lyrics — “Condemner” is an antonym for “pardoner”. No forgiveness.

As for how the lyrics fit with the rest of the music, the music is always written first (writing lyrics-first is part of what caused my older black metal works to be overindulgent), and then words are written to match the composition — first, more generally, as a song title, and then, more specifically, as actual lyrics. Some might notice the parallel between the lyrical topics and my own intent for the music here to be more disciplined than my previous works, but this wasn’t intentional; I didn’t notice it myself until long after I had already decided on Condemner’s concept.

JH: I can’t speak so much on the writing side of things, but I would say that I see death as a force to be honored and revered for its might. I prefer to not speak too much on the matter but the lyrics I contributed for the demo’s final track “Blood On The Oak (Death’s Wisdom Great)” are about an experience I had in which I was confronted with that might. It was a triumph of death, to say the least. I relate my own experiences to PB’s lyrics as well, although again I will not speak much on the subject.

I would completely say that the lyrics fit the morbidity of the music — any other lyrical topics would be monstrously out-of-place for an atmosphere like this. Interestingly enough, the lyrics for “Blood on the Oak” were initially written in late 2014 and were used in two different bands that each split up before the song could be recorded, but I would say that it has found a perfect home in Condemner.

CM: The individual riffs on Omens of Perdition are relatively simple when compared to what a lot of contemporary so-called “technical” metal bands are doing. Was that simplistic approach something that you chose on purpose or did that style of having all your instruments playing melody in unison just come about naturally?

PB: The riffs on Omens of Perdition aren’t technical because I don’t like the music that most “technical” metal bands make. With a few exceptions (Demilich!!!), it’s all attention-grabbing pyrotechnics with little portent behind it. It wasn’t a conscious decision — there’s no way that someone who loves Profanatica and hates Necrophagist is going to make something like Necrophagist. As to the instruments playing in unison, that was simply a result of how the songs were written — as mentioned earlier, all of the music was originally written for a single guitar, so the other instruments were always destined to follow the guitar.

JH: For the bass, everything is kept simple and following the guitar parts for maximum force and impact on the listener. I see Condemner as following the Tom G. Warrior school of “less is more”, and I’d say that the end result was successful.

CM: Can you explain (in as great or little detail as you want) the process of writing a song? Does it begin by jamming until new riffs emerge or is there a more structured method?

PB: Generally, it starts with me coming up with a melody in my head, and turning it over in my head for a few days, silently humming variations of it to myself. Once I’ve done that, I can generally pick up my guitar and write riffs that complement the one that I had in my head with little trouble, and then I can work on expanding that narrative, writing contrasting riffs and looping the structure back on itself as is fit. The real meat of the process, though, is simply playing the song until there’s something about it that I dislike, fixing that problem, and then repeating that process over and over. There’s one song on Omens of Perdition that’s an exception to this rule — “Executioner’s Canticle” was built around a structuring technique I had noticed Morbid Angel using on “Maze of Torment”.

JH: Currently PB writes all Condemner material and most of the lyrics (I wrote “Blood on the Oak (Death’s Wisdom Great)”); an arrangement that is working well. PB and I are located several hours apart and lack a human drummer, so “jamming” in the traditional sense isn’t really an option.

CM: Being from Texas, are you part of a uniquely regional style or does your expression of death metal run counter to any regional paradigm?

PB: I don’t think there really is a “Texas death metal sound” in the way that there’s a “Stockholm death metal sound” or a “New York death metal sound”. That said, I think it’s obvious that Imprecation and Blaspherian had an influence on Condemner’s style.

JH: While Texas has some of the strongest contenders to the death metal throne in its ranks, I would not say that Condemner sounds like many acts within our region. I believe that the closest would be in the form of some of the Houston death cults such as Imprecation and Blaspherian, but we are far from clones.

CM: What are the plans for Condemner’s future? Do you intend to gather a full line-up for live shows?

PB: No live shows are planned. I’m not opposed to the idea, but JH and I live about four hours apart, so logistics for rehearsals would be difficult. As for what’s planned for the future, most immediately, physical versions of Omens of Perdition will be coming soon — ZKD, whose work you have seen on the cover of all three issues of “Under the Sign of the Lone Star”, has agreed to do the cover art. A second demo, “Burning the Decadent”, with four more songs written in the period from 2009-2015, is planned; I currently plan on beginning the recording process in the Spring, which means you’ll probably hear it some time in the Summer. What happens beyond that is unknown, and dependent on the resources available and how long it ends up taking me to write new material.

JH: The reception to Omens of Perdition has been killer for sure, and there will certainly be new material. There are plans for a physical format of Omens as well, as the cover art is still in progress.

It would be great to perform these songs on a stage some day, although PB and I are currently separated by a distance of several hours which makes the idea of rehearsal logistically complex. I also maintain a heavy schedule with other bands not named here (as I do not want Condemner to be any “featuring members of X” act – it stands on its own) which adds complications to the idea of getting together to play live. Still, I certainly wouldn’t rule it out in the future, especially since live session members wouldn’t be hard to find within my network.

CM: Any last words?

PB: Thanks to Deathmetal.org, both for the support of Condemner, and for keeping the flame of the DLA alive! As mentioned, physical copies of Omens of Perdition will be available soon– keep an eye out!

JH: Thanks to all who have supported this group in its short existence, including Left Hand Path Designs for the excellent logo. For the unaware, Omens of Perdition may be downloaded for free on the Condemner Bandcamp (a pay option is also provided for the inclined). Nothing more needs to be said — the music speaks for itself.

As the internet dies a slow death from both information overload and undue concentration (and thus agenda enforced) in sites like Wikipedia and Metal-Archives, many metalheads are returning to zines. Zine editors choose what to focus on and tend to specialize in certain levels of quality and types of metal, so if you find one you like, it becomes a combination learning experience and shopping guide.

Noticing a void of information on Texas specifically, JH (his lawyers insist that no identifying details are used) has started the process of bringing Under the Sign of the Lone Star to print. As part of the new wave of underground metal zines, this Texas-centric zine will focus on that which the mainstream media and internet chatter alike ignore.

We were lucky enough to get a few minutes with JH as he was loading suspiciously heavy blue barrels into a panel truck outside Lubbock…

When did this idea hit you, and what was your intent? What sorts of zines do you admire?

I’ve written on-and-off for years, and about two years ago I had the idea to put my thoughts to print instead of in a digital medium. Life got in the way and since I didn’t have any real focus other than “bands I liked”, the idea fell by the wayside. Fast-forward to the tail-end of 2014 and I found myself staring at a magazine rack full of “metal” magazines with, surprise surprise, no actual metal (or at least, with the actual metal de-emphasized in favor of flavor-of-the-month trash). I found myself compelled to write again as a reaction against those publications and began writing the zine as soon as I realized the concept.

I like my zines the way I like my metal demo covers: black-and-white, fairly minimal layout/presentation, and without pulling any punches if that makes sense. Some of my favorite (and most influential) metal releases are underground demos and I feel as the final result of UtSotLS is a printed equivalent of a tape demo (not that I’m comparing it to something as good as “Evil Metal”, of course). Also I’m not a talented writer in the technical sense, but I do feel a passion for putting thoughts to pen. I see it as similar to older releases that lacked by-the-book musicianship but had a near-tangible fire in their recordings.

Zines that get my support: Codex Obscurum, Slaves (#2 has killer interviews from Lust, Amputator, and more), Trident Nation, Chips & Beer, Zombie Danz, and Serpentscope which gets an A+ for original concept. And Slayer was killer, obviously.

What is the topic of the zine, and what will it cover, and will there be enough material?

The topic of the zine is bands from Texas that people should know about. Lots of reviews (including a few live ones), some interviews, and additional content that will hopefully open a few eyes to the metal that rules in this state.

As for whether there will be enough material; that will be for the readers to decide. Personally I prefer to keep things short and to-the-point rather than drag things out longer than necessary. I’d rather read a 20-page zine with interesting content than an 80-page behemoth with maybe four good articles. I’m finalizing the layout at the moment but it will be over thirty pages which works for me.

What is the Texas scene like? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

The Texas metal scene could probably be summed up in three adjectives: loud, aggressive, and hot. Admittedly I would say that it is fairer to split each city into its own scene rather than Texas as a whole for reasons elaborated on below, but just about every city has killer bands in their own right.

Strengths: The bands. That should speak for itself, but also the abundance of shows. There’s always something going on in at least one city (although you may have to drive for a while, see below). Also a lot of awesome bands from other states or countries play here often. Destroying Texas Fest XI with Blood Storm, Nocturnus A.D., Hades Archer, and Force of Darkness is an example of one that will crush.

Weaknesses: The state itself is gigantic. It’s pretty common to find yourself driving for hours to see a show in another city that would be the distance between states up North, or even countries in Europe. Also the summers are pretty brutal. Any time you’re in a venue and the AC is busted it’s borderline unbearable. But it’s always worth it in the end. Live for metal, get heat stroke for metal.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to get involved with metal? Are there other staff?

I’m a mid-twenties bassist who drinks black coffee and plays faster than he should. I am also a native Texan, if anyone cared. I started with Metallica at age 14 and the first “gaze into the abyss” was Slayer. Progressed through classic metal (Sabbath, Motorhead), then thrash (Sepultura, Exhorder, Hirax), then death/thrash (Voor, Slaughter (Can.)), then death (Obituary, Morbid Angel), then black (Averse Sefira, Emperor), and so on and so forth (this is a rough timeline and far from in-depth). Started consistently going to local underground shows in 2010 with a Hexlust/Birth A.D. show and haven’t stopped since, tinnitus and neckaches be damned.

No staff other than my girlfriend who drew the cover, provided some layout assistance, and took the photo of myself for the author section. UtSotLS is a personal project at the end of the day and I prefer there to be a consistent voice throughout the whole issue.

Why do you advertise as “anti-clickbait”? What does this mean in your own lexicon?

I wouldn’t necessarily call the above an advertisement since it was just a personal statement on my own Facebook page, but I do see it as a relevant approach. “Clickbait” refers to online publications that post eye-grabbing headlines or articles (often misleading) with the intention of bringing a lot of traffic to their site to make money off advertisement revenue (this doesn’t refer to the DMU obviously, haha). I write out of passion for writing and for the music that means more to me than any worldly possessions, not out of the need to fill my bank account. As a reflection of this, no band solicited a single review and there is not one advertisement in “Under the Sign of the Lone Star”: the content is there because I wanted to write about it, 100%.

The full statement “ANTI-CLICKBAIT RAG” was a tribute to Rok from Sadistik Exekution writing “ANTI-NORWAY SHIT” on his chest ages ago and I always love to cite SadEx (and Bathory, for that matter).

If someone wanted to know what bands/zines from Texas that they MUST know, who would you list?

– Newer: Hod, Hexlust, Birth A.D., Blaspherian, Morbus 666, Spectral Manifest, War Master, The Blood Royale, Church of Disgust (They’re split between TX and Florida, but that’s good enough for me), Funeral Ash, Whore of Bethlehem, Maiestas, Oath of Cruelty (who have members that are now in Morbosidad who get 666% support), Nexul/Hellvetron/Nyogthaeblisz, Termination Force, Skan, Id, Cleric, and Sigil. I’m just going to stop here since I can’t possibly list everyone – read issue #1 for plenty of examples!

– Zines:

Feral Noise was a killer one, as is Underworld Zine which I believe is based out of Houston if I’m not mistaken.

I understand you’re involved with the Metal Enema radio show. What’s that like? Do you consider yourself a ‘metal activist’?

Metalenema is no-holds barred insanity. I’m somewhat amazed that I haven’t been driven mad over my three-year tenure on the show, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. In all seriousness it’s a blast and one of the key ways that I myself find out about newer music from Undertaker’s contributions to our mixes (otherwise I would probably hole up in my cave listening to nothing but the same four Celtic Frost songs over and over again). We are proud to wave the flag of extreme metal over the airwaves and hopefully enlighten listeners to the way of death/black/thrash.

In all honesty I wouldn’t use the term “activist” to describe the way I live since it makes me think of stereotypical naïve teenagers with well-meaning-but-misguided political affiliations, but I do live for this music that burns inside of my soul. I enjoy plenty of other music, but metal is what set me free. Ad Majorem Metallum Gloriam : To the Death.

Many thanks to DMU for the interview! For the interested, a preview of the zine with a few interview scans is available at the link below:

Editor’s note: this originally appeared in issue #3 of the zine “voices wake us…” (“Voices Wake Us…” Zine. $1ppd. voiceswakeuszine@hotmail.com) but it can be disseminated freely so long as this notice remains intact.

Questions by “Voices Wake Us…” Zine.
Answers by MkM (vokillz).

First off, what is your name and what part do you play in the band (instrument or vocals, etc.)?

vokalist, disease holder of AntaeuS. Satanik stigmata & preacher of the Void. 27 years old up to this day, non dead to most humans. Frontman & main voice for AntaeuS, I do speak for Him.

Now to the real questions. Black Metal’s legendary “first wave” included so many legendary bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone, and Immortal. Many conclude that the evolution of BM ceased after this period, so what do you think Antaeus’ relation is to the progression of the art? Is it justifiable to be merely more extreme? Can anything be added to the music at this point that has not been done already?

Black Metal does mix both ideology & musick, on this level, I would have to point out that most of nowadays bands have no linkz with the real meaning of this Art.Immortal never really took part of the bm kult, though their sound is very similar, their concept would be more based on northern landscapes, while bands like dark throne & mayhem had a more nihilitic death feels to the lyrikz & the aura was a bit more depressive in most cases.

We are payin hommage to those bands of the second wave, for their dedication in the early days & the message they did spread. We do evolve in the same vein, we hold the same message & our speech is based on hatred, denial of life & anything that would be related to “holyness” any religions wise, anything “human” related would be a target.

Black metal = SataN in its most strikt vision, we here speak of death, total death & the praise of the vortex that would swallow all. Though the utopia of such an ending is known of us, we do work in this way, spreading our disease & disgust of life and the concept related to it.

Sound wise, we are more extreme than the suscited bands, we couldn’t perform the same of art, for multiple reasons : we do breed violence more than depression (as individuals) & we do perform what we are & breath. The band is composed of 5 individuals more or less evolving on the Hate path. Me & Set being at the forefront of this, & since we are the main composer (him for the music & I being the sole responsible for any lyrikz & propaganda), we are the trademark of AntaeuS.

Also our approach is more destruktive than the “90s” gloomy approach of darkness, while they were opening gates of despair, we are opening gates of torment & pain.

Both are as effective, I truely find my inspiration in both, but violence is our key, our vektor.

Feel his pulse through us.

We are one stone of the edifice.

Black Metal is like a kathedral of Hate, it is not a question of evolution, the “evil”ution within takes place within the rankz of devotee evolving & praising the kult.

You have expressed dissatisfaction with the Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan album as being too rushed in the studio. To me, I can say I do not think it harms the record and adds to the urgency of the album. However, you have a new album coming out and will this be different and in what way a “representation” of the band that we have not already seen?

Somehow you are right, now that the album is older to my ears (two years or so) I get to listen to it in different perspectives, not rekalling all the shitty detailz about its conception & its spreading.CYFAWS was a gathering of mostly old trackz, like demos & reh tracks, all gathered on the same full lenght. Only one track never appeared anywhere before the cd release (though I am not even too sure about that now, I should check the live tape on chanteloup creations…) also the cd had three different rekording on it, which was a bit messy & made it sound more like a recollection than anything else.

Now, I think that baphomet did allow the band to put all together the most efficient earlier track of the band (inner war, devotee, nihil khaos…) but a rerecording of the whole album would have been best, now that would be the main complain about this lp.

Also this album did cost us a lot of money, but I do not fool myself, it is the same way for many bands around here, still having labels to cash on your work without being fair to the band is something I will never tolerate. That made me freak out, the band never got a fuckin cent out of the sale of the band, considering it did reach around 3000 copies (which is amazing to us, we never expected this much) one could easily guess that we got massively fucked on this one.

DE PRINCIPII EVANGELIKUM the newest release presents a more compact release, being composed on a two years basis, the whole has a more “united” strukture & lyrikz wise, that did allow me to have something fully solid. This time the lyrikz are included, I had the time to type all in time so people will finally get to understand what lies behind antaeus, though it will remain obscure to most or simply fucked up.

DPE is less easy to get into, it took me a few month to get into some trackz myself, having one hell of a hard time to lay vokalz on those & get the whole strukture in the reh’ room

The band does reh’ around 6/7 hours per week in the reh’ room & more when we get nearer to live exp or studio rekording. We get ridd off a lot of material, our work is very serious & we are making sure to have the most efficient offering to the black metal kult.

I think that one thing that would lack on DPE would be the intro sektion that are truely important to me, this time the drummer & I did lack time to meet & do something of my taste, that is my main “negative critic” to the new album. Next release shall see a return to those sonic landscapes & all the frustration that did hide behind those.

Many BM bands are one-person projects (Burzum, Bathory, Taake, Krieg, Ildjarn, eventually Emperor, and at times Darkthrone). What is the band construct of Antaeus? How does the song-writing process work and who does most of the “legwork” for the band, ie: setting up gigs and record-related business. Any comments on past members or development of the band over time?

You would mention there strongminded individuals that had one hard time finding the right members to perform their art with, or simply couldn’t deal with others, due to ego conflikts.I was just a session member in the early days, being too busy with my zine & my distribution (& my former band)

When AntaeuS turned into a virus in me, I felt like it had to evolve further than the limitations that the main man back then had for it. I think that all took shape when I got hold of all the strukture of AntaeuS, getting set as main guitarist was the best move ever, since we have known each other for years & we had the same musikal taste (for the early 90s sound, nowadays we tend to listen to different aktz yet our basis are the same).

Drum wise, we decided to get ridd off the drum machine & never changed since.

Bass & rythm guitar wise, we might have had more than 20 different members within the band, but in 98 we did finally find the right one, being also involved in Eternal Majesty with whom we did a split demo back then. I did know them since they were working a lot with SPIKEKULT (since their first demo, “dark empire”).

Since then, the line up is perfekt & all of us are united & work on the musikal struktures.

For all the rest, interviewz, ideals, propaganda, kontaktz, ALL is done by me & me only. Mostly due to the fact that I am the only one speakin & writtin in english.

That does take a lot of my time, due to this I did stop all others implications (my zine, other bands & even spikekult for some months/years).

We do not seek gigs really, since conditions are always fuckin ridiculous or awful, I try to avoid to the max getting to play live, though we had two or three great shows since 94; mostly over the two past years.

Getting gas money & some beers seems to be the VERY best we could get in europe, even if we perform in front of 300 people… the cost to rent a place is so high that none could ever pay the band.

A couple reviews I’ve read of CYFaWS, while positive, have accused the band of not bringing anything new to the table. Stylistically, I would say that Antaeus is a) faster (I’d say only Krieg is as fast), b) more “grind”, c) less atmospheric, d) more brutal and divided into penetrating structures of noise than in an “epic” sense of many bands. Agree? What is the aesthetic you are going for here, other than just “fast.” Because it is definitely a unique and not just a retro sound.

I do agree with those reviewz, still we never did claim to bring anything to new, so I sometimes wonder why we are accused of that, just like we were lyin about it.True, we are faster, though I would use “more brutal” instead, since speed for itself doesn’t mean much to us, tons of swedish bands are playin hyper fast, but both the drumz & riffs are without any effects on the listener.

Brutality & Hate are the main faktors in AntaeuS sound, we do hold this pulse & seek to create such aura within any rekording of ours.

Our epic approach might be linked to the tension we do put in the rekordin process.

The grind aspect cannot be denied as well, musik wise, some bands are truely unique to me, but the message, most of the time, would be simply ridiculous or be the opposite of my ideas.

Older grind bands had more of a dark or sick approach compared to today’s fun/gore/political bands.

Hate is a large concept of the band. Does this reach over into politics at all? Many BM are clearly fascist, a politics based on hate, while others are nihilistic (and in that sense, partially anarchistic). Views of politics in yourself and in the scene?

Hate is anywhere, but most politics would serve some instead of others, while we support the death of ALL; all those fascist bands are always a source of interrogation in my kamp. All those linked to black metal & openly using both the sigils of SataNism & those of Nazism are creating a nonsense to me.the nihilistic part is often dealing with one hope for a brighter future, built on the ashes of nowadays society & values.

I do not have any hope of this kind, the only hope I have is tattooed on my chest.

Let’s go back on the nonsense, I don’t care about NS bands as long as they are not linked with black metal. Politics would limit the initial meaning of black metal.

NSBM seems more serious to the young than the “inverted cross”, since it would represent something more “socially involved”, having to deal with values that would be more “linked” to todays world & having more impact due to the importance of sigils (ie : the use of swastika or SS sigils are full of meaning & related to happening that took place less than a century ago). Politics are giving black metal a more “humanistic” approach, which I don’t really understand. I would understand sadistik exekution using SS symbols or funeral mist for their vision of death in general, but as far as “human values” are involved, I simply don’t get it.

Any individuals mixin bm with ns should realize that there is already a scene for that, anything metal related is more or less viewed as “outcast” due to the code of life (destruktive, alcohol, aggression)…

anyway when I think of those teens doing “sieg heil” here & there with their beers & long hair, they would be among the first to enter the gas kamp that does make me laugh

Death is the main goal anyway.

In what sense is Antaeus a “do it yourself” band that controls the aspects of recording, promotion, management, and production itself? You are clearly dedicated to the underground, but many people are not familiar with the metal underground as much as the more-established and cohesive American punk underground. How does the underground work and how much is Antaeus a separate entity from outside control and influence of labels, promoters, etc?

A would be my band then, since I would be responsible for most of those aspects.Being honest, I am not too aware of the punk scene, though got to meet up with some labels from around here pressing punk vinylz & their scene seemed much more “supportive” & less “inner war” in between labels & so on. I might have a wrong of it though.

I would be totally dedicated to one aspect of the ug scene, which I could describe as the only real scene, with true sick freakz & not wannabes & morons of any kind that would pollute the bm kult.

those idiots are numerous & for the past years, I would have spent way too much time on those inbreed fags instead on workin on my code of life & supporting what had to be supported with the scene (bands & labels wise). Now we are viewed as traitors to most, since we did sign to Osmose.

Osmose allows us a studio rekording budget & having the whole distribution in their hand, I could never deal with that myself, my daily job takes around 50 hours per week now (compared to 70 h per week for last year) which makes it nearly impossible to cope with the mail & any correspondance in general. Even reh’ with the band got closed to impossible for me. All is getting better now, but as far as I am concerned, if A didn’t sign to Osmose, all would have stopped. I couldn’t go on paying 300 usd per month for the band, not having enough to cope for my own living cost.

Now we do loose less cash, but we still loose. So when I get to read that we did become fucking rockstars or sell out, I might ask to whom did we sell out???

A band selling 5000 copies (which even ain’t our case) could never live out of it, I am sure that you are aware of that, but many readers out there that did write us do think that we do earn enough money with the band to live with….

It was ok to reply to those questions the first years, but after a while, it killed me that most people wouldn’t get how it workz…

But hell, we are talking about fuckin labels detailz & how bands are getting fucked most of the time

Right now with Osmose, all is doing ok, we just did spend around 400 usd for this one, (lay out & mastering) since we did excess a bit the budget allowed for the studio rekording.

How is the French “scene?” Are there many bands, zines, or venues to play in? Are there a lot of posers?

Scene in france is not my fave subjekt, I did support many bands from around here in the past, being proud of my “local scene”, but all those bands did fuckin backstabb us for no reasons or so. “allies of today are the backstabbers of tomorrow”, thus I don’t mention too much about bands from around here.There is a fair deal of akts though, most of them are amateurish to the core & spending more time in front of camera or doing shirtz than working on the musikal parts.

All of them are envious little morons who are offended when they realize it is not that “easy” to have a cd out. They all think that demos are useless & that the underground is just a chat room on the net.

For the older ones, we had either conflikts with them or totally different views.

Apart from a few dozen individual in the whole france, we don’t get along too much with individuals from around here.

I had my fair deal of war around here.

In the newer band ; dark opus & aosoth are among my faves

DEATHSPELL OMEGA must be the ultimate black metal band the traditionnal way. END ALL LIFE is without any doubt the best vinyl bm label, they must have by now the CYFAWS on lp out, & that is one Honour for us to be on that label.

Zines? well 666 is the best in the extreme bm/dm way, eternal fire was killer too but defunct (or simply no newz from them since long), stregoica was kult in its dayz, now they are doing ordealis rekords which is very promising (killer work from their part), deadfuckinchurch is a good zine but he said that his final issue will be the next…

Some distro are great too, like paleur mortelle & warchangel.

AntaeuS will have a split 10″ with AOSOTH on Paleur Mortelle (akhaeus@aol.com) in the comin month btw.

Gigs wise, the audience is way better than any us gigs that I got to visit (& I had my fair deal of us deals over the three or four stayz I did over there), we usually get from 150 to 400 nowadays, but places are not so numerous & each venues does cost around 2000 to 3000 usd to rent for a night, with such prices, no bands would get any payment, asking for gas payment is already a dream for bands.

Due to that, in 2001, antaeus only performed live Once.

We did perform a bit more over the past months, with bands like nargaroth, taake, enthroned, eternal majesty…

The last hellish gig we did do was in Paris with taake & enthroned, our best set ever since 2001

In nov 002 we will be among the opening bands for the DEICIDE european tour, we shall desecrate new countries & I do expekt that tour I must say.

It’s nothing you’d understand, but I do have something to say. In fact, I have a lot to say, but now is not the time or place. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time or breath. But what the hell? As for what is said of my life, there have been lies in the past and there will be lies in the future. I don’t believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society. I need not look beyond this room to see all the liars, haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards — truly trematodes of the Earth, each one in his own legal profession. You maggots make me sick — hypocrites one and all. And no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world, which kill in the name of God and country or for whatever reason they deem appropriate. I don’t need to hear all of society’s rationalizations, I’ve heard them all before and the fact remains that what is, is. You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil, Legions of the night — night breed — repeat not the errors of the Night Prowler and show no mercy. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within us all. That’s it.

– Richard Ramirez

Most BM has diverged into “symphonic,” commercial crap. I’m sure you have some ventings on bands like this (Dimmu Borgir, Anorexia Nervosa, Ancient), or on “retro” bands like Dark Funeral. To many, Black Metal must remain underground and elite, and yet within it are elements that are more palatable to the masses- a band like Immortal proving that BM can be commodified over time. Thoughts on this phenomenon in Black Metal?

Like anywhere, when you get an artistic style that would be perceived as elitist & underground, one will have the wish to “extand” it on a different level, for various reasons.Some considers that the message should not be limited to one handful of individuals

some seems to think that they would sell more rekords having an “evil” image Some just find it “cool” to use such imagery Others are living the black metal kult, on a daily basis.

Music wise, I am closed minded when it comes to black metal, not opening myself too much to new genres, though I did try to pay attention to all those bands poppin up & crossing goth, indus & so on with black metal.

I must admit that diabolicum & mysticum were the only one that did match my expektations when it comes to the aura created.

On the other level, I also pay attention to the “performers”, for example : Anorexia Nervosa is often quoted as fag band, mostly due to the COF sounding of the musick. But on a personal level, the frontman is really a sicko & is among those few individuals I consider. Yet he would be a bit too much “rock n roll” sometimes eh too much drugz & autodestruction for me (which does provide a smile, that does you an idea on how fucked the man can be) aktually I think that when you get to meet him, he would be more in his place belongin to sadistik exekution than anorexia (musick wise) Ancient & dimmu borgir never made it to me, not even one track from their early days (the ep of ancient was ok though).

You did qualify some elements of black metal as “palatable” for the masses, yet we have to redefine masses then, since those masses would be the “extreme metal scene” which is not that wide, only a few thousands people I would say.

Not something that could be play on the air of any local radio show & musical tv shows or whatever. We are not dealing with “pop” music. But I do agree, black metal did sadly evolve to a wider audience & that doesn’t mean that the real audience did grow bigger, just that it did expand to people that simply don’t get a clue of what real black metal is about.

Having some individuals to compare napalm death to dark throne amazes me… the only link between those bands is mostly in the instruments used & some beats. (& some would kill me for the “rythm” comparaison)

Anyway, on our level, like other bands, we remain an underground band, you will most likely always find “cyfaws” & “dpe” on cd format, but we will go on doing limited tapes & vinylz. Only for those few sick ones that are also the pulse of the band.

It does mean a lot to us to be supported by like minded individuals, band members or zine editors or just listeners.

I do not get much letters in that vein, but with those few with whom we share visions, getting to read some comments on AntaeuS work is always rewarding.

Our satanik audio violence would be a weapon & only some individuals know how to handle it & how to view it properly.

Carcass or Bolt Thrower? Pick one.

Fuck… Bolt Thrower

at least they didn’t change & “cenotaph” is an instant classic for me, such as the “in the battle there is no law” lp. carcass had amazing trackz but fuckin wimped out too much for my taste.

When can we expect the new album (on Osmose, right?) and will there ever be an American tour??

the new rekordin shall be out on sept 23rd in europe, so obviously a bit later in the usa, osmose doesn’t have a distributor over there I think, so most releases are available mostly through ug mailorders & so on. I doubt one will find it as easily as CYFAWS over there. I seriously doubt on the american tour thing, though I wish we could go over there & perform with bands like black witchery, thornspawn, krieg, demoncy, gbk & so on. Since we are doing a european tour for “DPE” in november, as opening band for Deicide, I am not nearly sure that no tour will happen until the next release (the third album that is).Having us on a european tour would mean getting the band on a bigger “bill”, having an headlining band that could make it possible. As of now, I have no big expectation about a us tour, since it seems nearly impossible, we are not “selling” enough to be pushed that way.

The Deicide tour is already something really expensive.

In the future, who knowz? but I wouldn’t be surprised if the band never gets to perform over there.

Bands like marduk, satyricon & others took forever to go to the other continent & most of the time, itz like a money vortex more than anything else.

Time shall tell, we still have to perform over here first, that is our territory & we haven’t visited more than three countries as of now (which would be like performin in three different states for a us bands).

To you, what is most important in sustaining black Metal into the coming years, as it is increasingly an “endangered” form of music?

I see it that way : Evil will never dies, it might change shape, as long as some form of Art will be dedicated to its “grandeur”, I see no problem with itBlack Metal has somehow a more raw approach to it, a darker incarnation meant to appeal to more extreme masses, thus a minority of individuals are truely meant to understand fully the concept behind this genre.

Black metal is nowadays marketed as a musical genre only, with gimmicks to help the sales. Many bands did take the opportunity to rise using those “eye catching” ideas related to black metal.

Your top 5 BM records?

DarkThrone “a blaze in the northern sky”
Funeral Mist “devilry”
Katharsis “666” + “red eye of wrath” demo
Blasphemy “fallen angel of doom”
Beherit “D. down the moon” (& oath of the black blood)those are the ultimategettin near to that, I’d add sadistik exekution (all releases), profanatica, demoncy, krieg… I’d easily give 20 names that would represent the whole list of bands I really support…. Giving 30 names would be impossible though. not enough bands have individuals matchin the right ideology one should have within the bm scene.

Thanks for the interview! Good luck on your upcoming record and in the inevitable Satanic victory over the forces of light. Have a nice day

Forces of Light are forces of lies as well, they are their own failure & we shall be the witness & the temptation for them.Take a look in the abyss & the abyss will stare back at you

Introduction: The Northernmost Death Metal

Shattering the stasis of human evolution
Pioneering man of god-like stature
Erase and improve the temple foundation
Annihilate the meek, empty and inferior

– Devilry, Ouroborous Coiling

Some of us remember Finland as it was in my early youth; a humble country, tormented by Russia’s eternal presence, influenced by American dreams, taciturn men stubborn in idealism, tainted by alcohol and madness, working to preserve the ambiguous myths of freedom and independence while searching for truths in a society where the rules of piety and devotion did not apply anymore.

Out of the silence and the cold of wintry nights arose wolven howls, bestial growls and the electric screech of demoniac strings. Clandestine groups scattered across the lake-adorned strip of land which was too vast in area for the people to be in constant touch except by phone and letter, took to the newest musical movement to inherit the throne of the kings of headbanging and thrash: grindcore. Xysma from Turku played Carcass inspired devolved bursts of groovy noise with the mechanical straightforward approach upon which Finnish industrial corporations later built their reputation.

Abhorrence, eventually to be mutated into an exploration of battle and folk attitudes in Amorphis, was among the first Death Metal formations in the real Scandinavian style. Morbid demos from around Finland swarmed like an infestation of maggots. The next few years’ worth of offerings continue to mesmerize and awe fans of old school Death Metal worldwide: Funebre, Sentenced, Disgrace, Phlegethon, Purtenance, Adramelech, Mordicus, Necropsy, Demigod, Vomiturition, Convulse, Depravity, Lubricant, Cartilage, Wings, Demilich and others.

Tuomas K.: I think it was a sort of tribute to our favorite bands in our case back when we started playing in 1993. We were heavily into the early 90′s Death Metal bands so it was kind of natural for us to give it a go, since we’ve had started trying to play our instruments only a couple of years earlier. There were only me and Roni S. playing back then and we never really intended to find another member back in the 90′s. But if we should’ve wanted another member to play, I think it would’ve been pretty hard to find one, because I think we knew only a few guys that were into Death Metal from our neighborhood. Then again, when Lie in Ruins started “for real” in the new millennium it was easier to get a lineup together.

Jalas: I can agree on that this was the strongest period for the music and most of it died in the mid 1990′s when Black Metal music “took over” the underground. For me it is still a bit hard to analyze all this. I have always listened to what I want and when I want. I’m not saying that I didn’t have Black Metal seasons, but bands like Slayer and Morbid Angel were always there, lurking behind (both in my record player and as recording artists).

Death Metal as an item of fashion soon trailed away and the sonic temples formed by groups of school friends split up or moved on to styles better appreciated by their peers. Drinking alcohol in frozen woods and abandoned cellars while scrawling prayers to darkness and exhaling riffs of death was replaced by jobs, families and military service. Most of the cheap labels went out of business since B grade grindcore and Death Metal where not profitable anymore, dooming many of the aforementioned relics of the scene to obscurity until a partial resurrection through reissues and MP3 hubs.

Pyykkö: Finnish bands got tired of playing Death Metal and wanted to be something that they really couldn´t master very well. It was quite embarrassing shit to watch in some cases.

Those Once Loyal: The Last Stand of the Underground

The chromatic, fiery madness of original Death Metal was too much for the glamour-seeking generation who caught glimpses of extreme metal through the media attention of Black Metal and the TV exposure of “Gothenburg” and gothic metal. Other fans disregarded the old groups for their lack of consistency and humorous appearance, complete with interviews that often read like a discussion of retards in a hangover attempting a foreign language. But as always, true spirit is elusive and the self-importance of the new scene was hardly a better choice in life.

Not many of the original Death Metal fans were enthusiastic about Children of Bodom’s sappy power metal infiltration of Gothenburg techniques or Rotten Sound’s mechanical drum clinic grindcore. Nevertheless, the next generation of longhairs were inspired by these bands who had mastered the latest techniques of production perfect for a violently loud catharsis in car stereo or as a video game soundtrack. It was escapist, but not the Yuggothian dreams of a Demigod. In this case, influenced by groove metal and speed metal, commercial Death Metal sought to act as a youth counselor, harnessing hate and psychotic religion into the individualism of I don’t give a fuck and the various related ethical systems of liberalism.

It is appropriate that while studio musicians’ and record label executives’ fake Death Metal from Helsinki was climbing the charts, the real good stuff started happening in the underground. Black Metal, as always, was an anti-social reaction to commercialization and the turn of the decade saw a resurgence of Finnish devil worshippers returning to the blasphemous sounds of Bathory and Darkthrone. The travesties at large left people wondering if Death Metal was truly dead and unable to bestow any more bloody and sacral offerings to the underground. This is where the morbid cults under our scrutiny enter the field.

Jalas: In the beginning of Slugathor our line-up was the same as the one we had before we started to play Death Metal. But soon we dropped one guitar player and only had 4 members in the band for a while. Our original vocalist, an esoteric person, Nebiros, was an important member in the beginning and wrote really
non-typical more philosophical lyrics than was heard in typical Death Metal at the time. Also the universe, our seen nature and all experiences influenced us, besides the spoiled “metal scene” that was in the late 90′s, which was also indeed very influential in a way. Definitely I would describe our approach more
brutal than most of the other bands we heard from Finland. This is one of the reasons to start the band like this, besides ultimate passion and love for the genre.

Haavisto: In fact the birth of Deathspawned Destroyer was a mere accident. We had meant to just play any kind of metal, in order to have some additional instrumental practice considering our other bands and so we decided to play Death Metal or a related style with Kai Lehtinen. Death Metal was a rather obvious choice because of a our mutual interest in the genre and the aim was to sound alike to old Cannibal Corpse, Blood, Autopsy etc. without any ambition to create something unique. However we started to churn out a great amount of songs, one each new rehearsal. Then we decided to make up a name for the band and we found a good one from a Cannibal Corpse album title: Bloodthirst. That’s what we were called at the time we did our first demo “Reign of Terror”. The demo sounds exactly like it was supposed to and the overall sound is like we meant it to be. The vocals were supposed to be brutal enough and the sound had to be muddy. To the surprise of both of us someone wanted to release our album. At this point we noticed that there were a few other Bloodthirsts around so we decided to go for a name that no-one else would have for sure, ending up with Deathspawned Destroyer. Originally it was Deathspawn Destroyer but we are told that it’s grammatically bullshit so we added the “-ed”, which still doesn’t sound as good to me as the wrongly spelled one. But anyway the band was born by accident, me and Lehtinen totally agree on the spirit.

Partanen: In 2004-2006 I had been doing a few ambient releases and when those projects hibernated, I had a fresh vision back into the darkness of Death Metal magic. I don’t know exactly what the inspiration for Sepulchral Aura was. There was a vision which commanded itself to manifest through my fleshly vessel and I’m glad it happened.

Lautamäki: Before we got our singer Ascended played some kind of mixture of thrash and Death Metal. Things started to evolve towards traditional Death Metal when we started to discover Finnish gems like Abhorrence, Amorphis, Demigod, Demilich. The sound of those bands was very immense. It was dark, heavy and still maintaining some very mystical quality to it. The only thing left to do was to create and emulate same atmospheres like those records have and introduce our own vision of Death Metal to the world. The hardest part of completing the lineup was to get a decent singer. When Tommi contacted us and joined in it was clear after few rehearsals that the lineup was perfect.

Pyykkö: The idea to form Hooded Menace happened more less by an accident during our Candlemass jam sessions. Instead of melodic vocals we used Death Metal grunts. It was fun to play and worked pretty well so we thought why not to make our own band that would would combine the elements of Doom and Death Metal. I have been wanting to do something like this for a long time. So that three-piece jam session group became the lineup for the “Fulfill the Curse” album.

Holm: Our guitarist Grave’s urge for self-expression and inexhaustible well of riffs is what ultimately inspired the birth of Devilry. Everything else is inconsequential and not of great importance at all.

The new millennium saw a legion of astute musicians interested in unleashing explosive, severe and gripping metal without taking part in the pretense of the new generation of Black Metal. In many ways, the sacred and primal integrity of old school metal had collapsed because widespread attention had created an unstable communal atmosphere of unclear and mismatched intentions. That is why most of what we hear in mainstream media regarding new metal is irony, jokes about “true metal” and meta-metal bullshit filled with endless self-references. Yet, a strong web of personal contacts, by letter, phone or Internet, fueled the fires of Death Metal, along with a fanatically devoted fan base.

Lie in Ruins: Swallowed by the Void

The veteran Death Metallers from Olari practiced and mastered their Scandinavia influenced art for 15 years before their first release on a label, the impressive “Architecture of the Dead” EP featuring older compositions. While this unique band seemed to receive very little promotion, disciples prayed for the day of reckoning when this constellation could bestow their malevolence in full force upon the wretched scene. The long, exhausting spell “Swallowed by the Void” was to be the definitive answer to these inquiries. Sluggish, conjuring and micro-melodic abyss anthems pay unyielding tribute to the likes of Dismember and Grotesque, aiming for an evil glory that betrays the way death metal lost the innocent meddling in dark arts prevalent in the late 80’s and discovered serious ideologies by the force of contamination and crossbreeding with Black Metal. Especially the progressive moods of the deadly closing track “Bringer of Desolation”, reminiscent of the Lovecraftian horror pathos of the longer tracks by Nile deserves an inclusion in the Death Metal canon of the decade. Serious catacomb dwelling fans of Repugnant and Necros Christos will feel completely at home with Lie in Ruins’ atmospheric, sacral method of composition which eschews fast and classical parts, but returns to the Sabbath-ian roots of primal death doom experience.

Devilry: Rites for the Spring of Supremacy

One of the most anti-social and least compromising commando squads from Finland in any musical genre, Devilry’s series of EP’s cumulated during the decade into an impressive demonstration of technical and lyrical ability that converted hordes of Black Metal listeners into old school Death Metal and vicious thrash. Like a less confused “The Laws of Scourge” era Sarcofago, Devilry abstains from long buildups to frame scenes of street violence and political upheaval in robotically symmetric percussion and inhuman, precise, spouting syllables of learned rhetoric. One of the fastest Finnish metal bands, at least in overall impression, Devilry quotes Slayer for a reductionist but holistic approach to songwriting which means that each song is built from a clearly defined set of riffs arranged to unleash the most powerful experience of intensity on the listener, while Sir Holm’s text praises the law and order of a reich that would be built according to the code of the warrior and rule of the naturally supreme. Essays could be written about Devilry’s interest in beauty, as despite the feral character of the music all songs are geometrical complexes with no loose parts hanging and even the cover picture is a serene, celestial scene incorporating Finnish functionalist architecture. Even the condemnation and hate that hangs as an eternal cloud upon the political rants of Devilry, are mostly posed as arguments of: what is not beautiful, does not deserve to be upheld, not even tolerated.

Tuomas K.: It has been fairly easy for us to find contacts in the Death Metal underground so far. I think the communications are now way better compared to 90′s. It is easier to get yourself “heard”. The downside is that you also get a lot of these individuals or groups who want to get themselves heard, so you’ll have to dig a little deeper to find something worthwhile. In the end it’s still the music that speaks for itself, so that has to do a lot in order to get support or even fans of your work.

Jalas: I also think it was not hard to find contacts for people who are really into Death Metal. Just look at Tomasz (Time Before Time). Despite his young age, he has been long time in the underground and he actually was also one of the first constant contacts I found (I think back in 2001 or so).

Pyykkö: Nowadays getting contacts is very easy because of the Internet. It´s damn easy to spread your music over the Internet. Myspace is a very good tool for that. There´s an endless amount of crap but also lots of good stuff. The communication has become easier but then again there´re so many bands around that you have to be pretty damn good to stand out. I have found these times very good for metal. There is still a demand for a “real thing” and people around seem very enthusiastic and passionate. The old days won´t come back. The most exciting era of metal lies in the past but man, I´m having a blast today! Things could be much worse. I´m not a huge follower of the scene but it seems to be doing really fine. Metal is still exciting and fresh in a very rotten way though!

Holm: Devilry has been such a solitary entity during the past few years that I do not have a clue about what goes on and where. I really do not even care. There is obviously support for our cause, else we would not exist in the public at all, but I am not interested in such trivial matters as finding fans and contacts.

Partanen: For Sepulchral Aura the response has been surprisingly good. I guess there’s support, fans and contacts out there at least for those who deserve, but I’m not that interested about that. But still it’s good to hear that some people have liked the CD and care to promote it and Sepulchral Aura in their own way. In general, people around me are not interested in Death Metal.

Lautamäki: There has been minor Death Metal scene rising in Finland and it has been interesting to see that we are not the youngest band around devoted to this art. We were also just recently interviewed by Finnish metal magazine Miasma so I would say that there is slight interest growing to this style inside Finland. Also gigs like Slugathor, Lie in Ruins and Stench Of Decay in Helsinki are helping the scene a lot. Many people don’t view Death Metal as an ideological and devoted music style such as Black Metal for example, but there has been so many Death Metal bands who have been loyal to their style and ideology for years and should be honored for showing such a devotion to this form of art. Also new genres like this so called Deathcore spawning from United States are distorting the views of what Death Metal is really about.

Slugathor: Echoes from Beneath

Slugathor is already a veteran of “new” Finnish Death Metal, having debuted in 2000 with the “Delicacies of the Cadaver” EP right when everyone else was concentrating in elitist Black Metal fantasies. The morbid, dirty, ugly and non-theatrical submersion to grinding but dimensional grave exhumations was initially scorned upon but eventually they even signed to one of the premier Black Metal labels of the world, Drakkar Records from France. By the time of the third album “Echoes from Beneath” Slugathor knows exactly how to manipulate intensity and the listening experience of both black and Death Metal listeners, opening cavernous vaults and passages through warped holes in time and space using mostly foreboding rhythm guitar chugging of patterns familiar from since the dawn of Death Metal, ethereal melodic background leads by Tommi Grönqvist and evil vocals by Axu Laakso that borrow technique from both Deicide and Demilich without sounding as extreme as them. Like Bolt Thrower, this band is all about heaviness, ambience and symmetry while all “display” type of elements of technical Death Metal are kept to a minimum. A special mention goes to Ilmari Jalas’ drum technique which borrows heavily from Doom Metal in building up groove to a climax where dynamics emphasize the rhythm riff so that the only possibility is to headbang convulsively.

Jalas: Bolt Thrower influenced Slugathor really strongly in the beginning and always. Some people compare Slugathor also to bands like Asphyx or Obituary, but I would say that these influences are only minor and definitely more inspiration has flown, when we listened to bands such as Demigod, old Amorphis, Grave, Incantation and old Mortician. Definitely Morbid Angel also, but this was not heard so well on our music very much, I think. Also some bands, like Kaamos and Necros Christos at least influenced me in a way, because they had such unique concepts and ultimate feeling of death. Some more obscure names pop up to my mind, such as Bloody Gore (Indonesia), Darklord (Australia), all female band Mythic and so on. You know, it was all these 7″EP and demos we listened at the time besides full-length albums. Even demo-material of Dying Fetus, which could be a shock (?) to some because of their nowadays political message. But that band was brutal as hell when we first heard them. Also they were lyrically more into mutilation, etc. back then. Maybe we got into that because of teenage enthusiasm, but for some reason all this stuff still has very special place in our hearts, because they developed us to become what we are now.

The slow new resurgence of Finnish Death Metal was a joy to behold as the pieces of music were sincere, the young fan base was delighted to get rid of the obnoxious attitudes that had contaminated the feeling of Black Metal and many of the bands and their releases were still very much conceptually constructed with great care and attention. Devilry spoke of a militant order against degeneration, Khert-Neter conjured images of ancient Egyptian paths to enlightenment, Sotajumala and Deathspawned Destroyer delved into the sufferings of the Finnish soldiers and Hooded Menace used horror movies as absurd and illustrative symbols for the infinite darkness that surrounds the apparent order in the sequence of human lives.

Deathspawned Destroyer: WarBloodMassacre

Primitive but astoundingly direct, Deathspawned Destroyer from Huittinen (home of Vordven) has with their two full lengths established Finnish parallels to grindcore influenced bands such as Blood and even Blasphemy but remained widely unnoticed because of a lack of pretension and promotion. While “The First Bestial Butchery” album indulged in gore fantasies of Finnish rural winter madness, “WarBloodMassacre” logically continues to explore real world horrors that happened within the same fields and woods we inhabit here. The shades and violent ghosts of Finnish war history 1939-1945 are not haunted, prophetic or wise in the nearly brainless, stomach churning vision of Deathspawned Destroyer. This is music and lyric of the gut, the trenches and the perpetual dirt. It is Bolt Thrower if it was created by boozing Finnish woodsmen instead of punk influenced British soccer fans. The riffs would probably tell their story as well to men who lived 10,000 years ago, provided they were fighters with hate for the scourge of slavery and love for their home woodlands. The slower parts approximate the atmospheres of Amebix brand of ethereal hardcore. The band gets a chance to try its hand at epic length composition with the more than 10 minute “Doom Before Death” and why the simplicity of structure may make progressive listeners cringe, there is hardly a criticism to be made about the way the parts are elaborated by the cruel lyrics that detail the sufferings of a prisoner of war under torture. The relentless forward driving rhythm and ghoulish voice of the band might be borrowed from the old school, but the vicious, nearly cartoonish black-and-white history flashback is something that needs to be heard to be believed.

Haavisto: Our lyrics were far from philosophy and deep meanings. The lyrics of “Reign of Terror” were almost completely taken from “The Diary of Jack the Ripper”, but edited enough to not be a clear plagiarism. On “The First Bestial Butchery” we built new lyrics almost by putting one harsh word after another and looking at the result. We did pay enough attention to lyrics to get one more sensible piece written by someone outside the band: “Autopsy Romance”. The cover art of the album was an idea we had in mind for a long time but had no suitable use before. The second full-length “WarBloodMassacre” was something completely different as the lyrics were entirely done by a person not in the band, with greater care and attention and with the war thematic. I think one can clearly see the main influence at the time being Bolt Thrower. I think the cover art was arranged for by someone at Bestial Burst and very fine they were, thanks for them. A special mention must go to the cover artist of the Bloodhammer/Deathspawned Destroyer split, as one couldn’t make a better representation of the old school spirit. The finest cover art ever.

Jalas: Like I said, Slugathor’s old vocalist Nebiros had quite philosophical lyrical themes. Some lyrics are easy to read, but not that easy to understand right away. They make you think. Well, after he went out of space and started to sing to birds instead of making brutal death noise, we had Axu in the band and he would be the right person to answer about the concept. I’m sure he had his own vision of what is a pure Death Metal lyric.

Pyykkö: The lyrical and graphic concept of Hooded Menace mostly comes from the 70’s Spanish horror film series “The Blind Dead”. That defines our name, the logo and the basic atmosphere of the band. All that slow motion and creepy, menacing mood of those movies are there in Hooded Menace. If you have seen the movies you know what I mean. “The Blind Dead” is the bottom line but there´s more to Hooded Menace than that. We have songs based on other horror films too and some lyrics come from the writer´s own imagination. That sleazy imagination is always strongly influenced by horror movies though! There´s no deeper philosophy to it. We are all about horror! That´s why I sometimes call us as a horror death/doom band. No horror, no Hooded Menace.

Tuomas K.: Lie in Ruins is conceptually 100% dealing with death, darkness and all things related. After all, this is Death Metal, so the lyrics and the imagery definitely should reflect that.

Partanen: The nucleus of Sepulchral Aura could be the juxtapositioning of chaos and cosmos, life and death and their intertwined yet paradoxical counter-natures. If one knows the Gnostic text “Thunder Perfect Mind” it could be easier to grasp the drift here. The rest is basically visions and of course experiences transmuted into sound and words. No particular philosophy, but reflections of the path toward self-knowledge by illuminating the shadowed aspects within, self-discipline through warrior and mystic ideals and becoming a higher being.

Holm: For Devilry, National Socialism as an all-encompassing Weltanschauung is the foundation on which everything is built.

Lautamäki: To keep things simple I just say that we are influenced and inspired by a very universal subject called death. Western world has a very sick and unnatural attitude towards such natural thing as death. It is totally ignored or people pretend that it doesn’t even exist while media has demonized it to the point that there are people who really don’t understand that death is something one has to face sooner or later. Not only concerning individuals and families, but one should understand that every civilization and culture will face death as it is seen through history. Only death is real!

Sepulchral Aura: Demonstrational CD MMVII

Sepulchral Aura is not the first time that mastermind J. Partanen (Second Sun, Aeoga etc.) has picked up the guitar and the drums but it’s the first time he produced a minor classic for the underground to remember from this era of harsh and esoteric Finnish metal. Cryptic, obscurant and violent atonality bursts from Partanen’s figurative composing pen much like Ligeti had developed a passion for speed metal and Death Metal, far from the technical pretensions of the Cynics and Pestilences of the world. Whoever upheld the common misconception that Death Metal is not mysteries and occult metaphor, whoever thought we needed the Black Metal “kvlt” to make us interested in life’s hidden forces and spiritual darkness, had not heard the very dimensional experience Sepulchral Aura engages us in. Lead guitars are non-musical but clear and comprehensible like alien messages sent straight into the brain cortex, vocals are guttural and rasped voices somewhere between animalism and insanity, drums sound like a tribute to old Carcass except for some very idiosyncratic ways to use rhythm and nuance to underline the chaos god that devises the riffs. It is impossible to consider a discussion of this demo that doesn’t mention the legacy of Australian Death Metal and War Metal all the way from Sadistik Exekution to the furthest reaches of Portal and Stargazer. It is very much the resurrection of the sincere belief and primal energy that fueled Bestial Warlust, but in this case consecrated by the wasteland of the North instead of the haunted chasms in Down under.

Partanen: Intent and improvisation played a major part in how the music itself turned out to be, so I cannot talk about conscious efforts of tributes to particular bands etc.

New Finnish Death Metal is not characterized by particular attributes in sound or can be fitted into one of the trends at large in popular Death Metal, such as fusion Death Metal, “melodic extreme metal” or hyperspeed brutal metal. Most of the bands perform intricate but non-pretentious variations on the classic Scandinavian styling (with lots of Boss Heavy Metal pedals around!), with an emphasis on accuracy and consistency of imagery and lyrics that has been newly found in the Black Metal wave of total art. Trey Azagthoth’s description of Death Metal as a feeling like serpents crawling in the amplifier is very apt in most cases. However, the Death Metal acts mostly wish to keep away from the personality cults and idol worship prevalent in other extreme metal and just keep the music fresh and intuitive.

Haavisto: That’s it. Death Metal is a feeling and when you find the right feel, your material starts to take form and develop and if it sounds a bit familiar already, who cares? It will be new because of the different sound and the feeling transmitted by the end result. It doesn’t need to be that new and special. “The First Bestial Butchery” had the most intense feeling because exactly the one I had about the resulting album was shared by many who listened to it.

Holm: Creating something fresh, Death Metal or not, is utterly unimportant to me. I am more interested in just crafting good songs. Otherwise it should be difficult to relay anything through it successfully.

Jalas: Without listening to any modern or happy shit, I think the variation becomes from small things, changing tempos, repeating riffs but adding a lead guitar. To be honest with these methods it is hard to invent something new, but there are still some ways to invoke the Draco.

Tuomas K.: Actually that description from Mr. Azagthoth is pretty good one! Haven’t heard that one before. As for creating fresh tunes of death, I think it has to do with inspiration first. Sometimes you could have an inspirational rush and just write a whole song from one go. The second option usually is that you dig into your “database” and pick ingredients from here and there and combine those parts to a new song. One thing that is obligatory to play or write Death Metal is a very low tuning on the stringed instruments, at least in my opinion. As for distortion goes, we opt for the Boss HM pedal too, only we don’t use it exactly to get the legendary Sunlight-sound. Add some doomier parts and twisted melodies, and there you go.

Lautamäki: Of those main ingredients listed above we only have the Boss heavy metal pedal which our bassist uses as distortion, so that’s the tiny bit of Swedish sound we have! We always try to deliver crushing and heavy songs which still aim to attach the mystical and ethereal feeling through dissonant melodies and solos inspired by mysteries of death and decay.

Ascended: The Temple of Dark Offerings EP

It seems sometimes like a wonder that so many Death Metal classics have been created by youngsters working on their first demo, EP or album but clearly it is a basis for less calculated and more intense statements of the primal truths these eyes have witnessed on their journey so far on earth. While the least experienced musicians on the list, Ascended from Pori prove not one bit worse in channeling the breath of exhumed grave into the nostrils of the expectant Death Metal fan. Simple but glorious, Ascended likes to keep it slow and groove onwards through melodies that recall old Tiamat, Slayer and even a bit of Black Metal. Much like Mystifier or Necros Christos, vocals intone an animated ritual chant to the dead in an almost numbingly rhythmic and non-varied manner. Sound is sparse and clear, with a surprising gap in the lower register lending the proceedings an airy, ethereal vibe of darkness. The foreboding calm of tracks such as “Wedlock of Lust” or the multi-part “Mesmerizing Stench” should be obligatory lessons for most of this generation’s Black Metal bands in what they have missed in pacing and atmospheres of evil. Technical ability and pages of morbid theology do not substitute for the realm of visions and subdued melodies that remind mortals of that which shall be over all too soon – the summer of life, clouded by the storms of the unknown, while the reaper grins to you in the horizon.

Hooded Menace: Fulfill the Curse

Perhaps no other themes in metal have suffered such an ugly abuse as those of gothic horror and its symbolic exploration of the unconscious, sexual and paranoid impulse within man. As plastic, theatrical and money-hungry hedonists swarmed like a pack of rats to invade Death Metal and Black Metal record labels, they left behind a legacy of fear which caused later audiences to abhor the careful and elegant treatment of the macabre that was the original intention of bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, before the same bands’ later development infused it with a homosexual taint. While Hooded Menace has not yet produced a work to outweigh the elders, it’s done more than its share in reviving hope in a form with plenty of potential. If there is one thing that has been sadly lacking in the last decade of Death Metal, it’s beautiful and clever melodies. Led by veterans from Joensuu’s progressive Death Metal cult Phlegethon, Hooded Menace pounds, thrashes and makes dramatic gestures of sweeping funereal melodies perfect for a Candlemass album while the lyrics are growled by Lasse Pyykkö (“Leper Messiah”) as absurdist anecdotes straight from 50’s B-grade horror movies.

The apparent cheapness of “Grasp of the Beastwoman” or “Theme from Manhattan Baby” is offset by the care and calculation which proves that Hooded Menace has a profound affection for its infantile source material. This trait establishes a profound link with the old school of Death Metal, the musical manifestation of the gore and trash movie obsessions of kids whose awareness of the relevance of death and morbidity to philosophical discourse was only intuitive and spontaneous.

Pyykkö: We owe a lot to bands like Candlemass, Cathedral and Winter. It´s not about paying tribute, it´s about making as good slow Death Metal as we can. It´s not a tribute for tribute´s sake, you know. This band is very natural thing actually. When I write metal songs I don´t try to be old school. I am “old” and schooled during the golden days of Death Metal so old school is pretty much what comes out whether I wanted or not. One reason why we decided to form this band was because we thought there weren´t enough decent Death/Doom bands around. We use the elements that we think will make the greatest slow Death Metal. This is our vision of how this type of music should sound at its best. Basically what we do is, I´m going really black and white now, recycle all those Candlemass and Cathedral riffs, throw in some creepy Death Metal vocals and spice it up with some horror soundtrack influences. We just know what elements there has to be in our songs… or at least we know what elements we definitely don´t want to include! It´s not hard actually. It all comes out very naturally. I bet you could tell if we sounded forced. The result is something that in some putrid way sounds fresh… at least to our ears it does, and that´s pretty much enough to keep us going.

The Lords of the Shadow Realm: The Future of Finnish Death

While most media continues to highlight the hyped up Heavy, Black and Doom bands from the Land of the Thousand Lakes, we at Deathmetal.Org wish to raise a mighty salute to the legions of blasphemy and resistance who are spreading evil Death Metal amidst the wastelands of the frozen North. Unique, demanding and powerful, these bands are not in the way to become the next big thing in Death Metal, but I have the sincere hope that each reader will find something in this diverse assortment that speaks to him in the voice of transcendental communication which is the reason we have been interested in this art for all these years. These hordes will either dominate the world or rule in shadows.

Pyykkö: Well, you never know about the future. I´d be happy with ruling in shadows, haha! Hooded Menace will never be hugely popular anyway. My ambition has always been to beat myself. To keep on making decent music as long as it´s fun, passionate and exciting. You possibly have noticed there have been some changes to the lineup after the “Fulfill the Curse” album. The other guys left the city of Joensuu because of work and studies so now Hooded Menace is a duo with me on vocals, guitars and bass and Pekka on drums. Pekka was an easy and pretty obvious choice since I already play with him in Vacant Coffin. As long as we don´t want to play live we can work as a duo like forever but sure a bass player would be nice for the rehearsals. It can get a bit boring to rehearse the songs as a twosome. Our next move in “spreading evil” is of course to release our 2nd album. That should be out sometime in the first half of 2010 on Profound Lore!

Haavisto: Once Lehtinen quit playing after the second Deathspawned Destroyer album, it meant an almost complete stop to our activity. We did two promising tracks with our new member Tuomas Murtojärvi, but we didn’t really get it properly going so the band and the Death Metal spirit has drifted away. People tend to have so much other things to do and the most important band related people have moved so far from us that when we have the occasional practice we play something totally different from Deathspawned Destroyer. The modern day Death Metal people seem anyway to be in a different world and there doesn’t seem to be a demand for old school ruckus. At least not among the “metalheads” seen in the streets around here. I haven’t followed either the recent developments in Death Metal, because the new bands don’t interest me one bit and the old ones have been devoured through and through many times. Deathspawned Destroyer rests in the shadows and maybe one day will be back and do something worth listening to… maybe. We need a guitarist who has a regular commitment to the project and who cares more about the attitude than playing right. It’s certain that things won’t work out again with the original Deathspawned Destroyer duo, but there’s no strife related to it. Hails to Lehtinen and everyone else who supported Deathspawned Destroyer and were a part of our activity in one way or another!

Tuomas K.: I think our ambition with Lie in Ruins is to create and release Death Metal which we find satisfying for ourselves. If there comes a time that I or we shouldn’t be satisfied with our work, I guess we should call it a day or at least take a timeout. If there should be any ambitions to create other kind of music, I think it should done under a different moniker, which I think that some of those old bands should’ve done as well.

Holm: There is no ambition in ruling in shadows. We already are. Supreme in the league of our own. That is where Devilry will stay too. Anything else would be doomed to fail.

Jalas: We never even thought about making some commercial music with Slugathor. I’m now proud to end this band without wimping out or changing style of music. I think we had our share of influence in the younger generation of Death Metal. It is unbelievable to notice that some new bands have started to sound
exactly like Death Metal is supposed to sound (1989-1991 era), even though they were hardly even born when those old bands recorded their classic demos or debut albums. Slugathor’s last offering of darkness will be a mini-album, in totalitarian Slugathor style, no compromise here either. We have played our last concert in Semifinal, Helsinki with Stench of Decay and Lie in Ruins. The band will be put on it’s already open grave, after a decade. Actually now when Slugathor’s time is over, me and Antti have decided to work on some very obscure and dark Death Metal. We just can’t stop this. Also the rest of Slugathor memebers are going to work on with their own musical projects. Which suits me the best “to dominate the world”, or “to rule in shadows”? I would choose the latter option.

Lautamäki: Ascended’s next big move is going to be a full-length. The process is delayed because of military service, but in Autumn 2010 we should be able to rehearse again with full lineup and maybe record the material by the end of the year. There’s plenty of material already written up, but there is just no time to rehearse it. One thing I can still promise is that the album is going to be nothing else than honest Death Metal. The only negative thing I can think of is that it is very hard to organize rehearsals since we have 5 members in the lineup.

Partanen: Also playing alone creates some practical obstacles, but they can be surpassed. I would prefer a real line-up, but due to certain aspects of the nature of SA, it is better to continue this way, at least for now. It is to become one with the shadows. Next release will be in 7″, 10″, or full-length format, but do not ask me when. The worthy music is visions, dreams, thoughts, discipline, magic, feeling and intent. The rest is a physical act. If you can smell the stench of transcendental death while playing, at least something is right. If you can see death, even better. If you die, best!

One of the great questions facing metal at this time is how it will propagate itself in a rapidly-changing record industry. Some have gone old school, and there’s evidence suggesting this is the most viable direction. Others are working with the new media to take advantage of its unique abilities.

Sinister Path Promotions is a pioneer in this recent field. By working through social media, Sinister Path reaches a large number of potential fans via their mobile devices and allows them to discover new metal. In addition, Sinister Path concentrates interest in a series of mp3-based compilations which help promote lesser known bands worldwide.

We were fortunate to be able to have brief interactions with Nicole, head of Sinister Path Promotions. Here are her answers to our interrogations.

When did you start Sinister Path Promotions, and what was your intent?

I started Sinister Path Promotions February 2013 (launched via Facebook) with the intent to share metal, and create a community for metalheads to interact. My best friend had recently passed away and I wanted to throw myself into something positive to honor my metalhead mate. My main intent at that time was to create a comfortable, non judgmental, interactive environment. We shared music links, news and did a lot of interactive type posts.

In a few months, we managed to build up quite a large fan base and I wanted to get my teeth stuck into my passion: supporting underground metal. There were a lot of larger pages posting about the more widely known metal bands but not many focusing on the underground. In April 2013 I then put together the first of what is now four independent/unsigned metal band compilations. More recently I’ve gotten involved in interviewing bands and have interviewed with people including Paul Speckmann (Master), Dennis Röndum (Spawn of Possession), and Matt Young (King Parrot).

The main goal of Sinister Path Promotions is to help bring exposure to underground metal. We do that by way of the compilations, interviews, news, and regular posts and interaction on the Facebook page. There are a lot of plans I have for the page and I’m excited to see where this can go!

What sorts of bands do you promote? Do you include “modern metal” (deathcore, metalcore, indie-metal, emo-metal) within that sphere?

I started Sinister Path Promotions with a focus on old school death metal, black, and brutal death metal. For me, death metal is where my heart is, but I think when it comes to promoting bands and doing it in a positive, approachable way, this means trying to include a variety. For us now, the focus is predominantly independent/unsigned metal bands and this includes all sub genres.

I take submissions and also and hand pick bands based on what I think the compilations need in terms of balance.

You’re Australia-based; a lot of famous metal has originated there. Do you have a top five or so of bands from Australia?

Top 5? You can’t do this to me! Yes, Australia has spawned some beast bands and it would be difficult to narrow it down. There are so many bands who have been so influential to me like Bestial Warlust, Damaged, diSEMBOWELMENT, Sadistik Exekution, Destroyer 666, Mortal Sin, Blood Duster. Then there are Aussie bands I’m following at the moment and cannot wait to see what they come up with next. I’m thinking about PORTAL, Ne Obliviscaris, Be’lakor, Entrails Eradicated, DEATHFUCKINGCUNT, Seminal Embalmment, King Parrot, Mephistopheles, Disentomb, Nocturnal Graves off the top of my head.

What are the day-to-day activities of Sinister Path Promotions? Are you planning to expand?

I run with a very small group of active admin (at the moment there are only four of us). Our day-to-day aim is to expose underground metal by posting music links, art, news updates, tour updates etc. We pepper this with some more well known bands, gear porn, interaction statuses, specific posts about underground musicians, statuses about our own personal gear/merch, basically anything that will be engaging and could help bring exposure to a band.

We have just launched a new compilation, so linking songs off that and promoting the bands involved in that is a priority at the moment. Us admin continually work in the background corresponding with each other about independent/unsigned bands that could potentially be approached to be involved in our samplers.

In terms of the future for Sinister Path Promotions, the independent/unsigned compilations are ongoing, the interviews are ongoing, the active nature of the page will always remain the same. I’m interested in exploring a variety of things including the potential of being a label, and setting up shows.

How did you (Nicole) get involved with extreme metal — was there a first band? What made you like this weird form of art?

The more extreme types of metal? Probably checking out gigs at University I think. There was quite a large metal scene there and shows on all the time. Prior to that I listened to heavy music all through school, and as a kid my dad was into punk and heavy rock. My brother used to sneak me into metal shows when I was underage too which is pretty cool haha. Was always open to heavier forms of music and always looking but I got serious about heavier and more extreme shit from Uni onwards really. I mean, I’ve always been into my music, have played guitar for 13 years, learning the drums, have been in bands, solo performances over the years. I know what it’s like to try to get exposure and I think that’s why promoting the underground is so appealing to me. I’m like a woman possessed trying to get the word out, and the moment when someone is introduced to a band via the compilations or the page, that’s the sex for me you know? That’s what it’s all about.

Can you tell me more about this underground bands compilation you’ve put out. Is it a physical release, and how did you select bands? Who do you think will enjoy it most?

The latest one is called: Sinister Path Promotions Unsigned / Independent Metal Band Compilation December 2013

Released through Bandcamp as a digital release; you can stream it or download it completely free. If you click on the individual tracks you’ll find more information on the bands so you can support them.

This current one has 42 metal bands from all over the world.

I approach the majority of the bands on it. I do have people who inbox the page or contact me other ways, and I check all of them out from there but mostly I look to gather up a variety of bands and styles and from there talk to them about being involved.

The compilations are a great way to check out some bands you might not have previously been exposed to and great for those interested in supporting the underground.

They’re awesome for bands to get involved with for a number of reasons. It helps bring some exposure because we link the bands on the compilation on a regular basis. The bands involved can contact me on the page any time they’d like to put out some news, info on new releases, pics, anything they’d like.

If people are interested in your promotions company, where should they go to contact you and/or read more?

Sammath rose out of the ashes of post-1997 blackmetal with a flair for classical-inspired architectural riffing within the shorter format of metal songs that were both listenable and radically opposed to the complacent normalcy invading black metal. The A.N.U.S. interview staff were able to intercept J. Kruitwagen’s cell phone from an abandoned ferryboat off the coast of England, and captured this interview by pretending to be investigators looking for clues about al-Qaeda.

What event or idea triggered your desire to release music? It seems like many play instruments, and only some go on to publish or be in bands.

When I first heard Gehenna “angelwings and ravenclaws” I was already writing music but not at all with the intention to release anything. This 7 inch inspired me the most, the atmosphere they created was something I really wanted to do myself. The only problem was that no one I knew wanted to record anything. I even used to play along with Slayer on a acoustic guitar before I had a electric one when I was ten, you have to start somewhere.

Are your songs designed around emotions, visual perceptions or purely musical “shapes”?

A combination of all. Mostly musical shapes, I try not to let emotion get in the way but thats impossible. You can’t write hateful black metal after you just had a great day with your girl. Watching a war movie on tv or old world war two documentaries really is the most inspiring. Reading about Stalingrad and the hell in the midst of war. The songs are all written the same way, I get the lyrical concept and build the music around this.

What things inspire awe in you?

Anything that deserves respect, in any way.

If you patterned your music after anything you found in your outside world, what were these things? Or do you see the patterns of the outside world as stylistic inspiration, and the poetic content of your songs deriving from somewhere else?

The outside world has its influence, even if you dont want it to. I would say that everyday violence, war, despair, hate finds its way into the music. I of course have never been or seen war. I don’t glorify war but the way destruction and chaos always win intrigues me. The content of my songs just appear and naturally find their way into a track. If my music should represent anything from the world outside it would be a falling bomb with the listener sitting on it.

What is the hardest part of songwriting?

The hardest part to songwriting is knowing when a track is finished and should be left alone, I have heard so many great tracks by other bands to that just take too long or have to many riffs jammed into twenty seconds. The thing about black metal is that it is a combination of feeling and music, no one of these should lead. Luckily noone interferes while I write the music. Sammath is just me, I have a great band for live acts but they don’t write any music.

You had a promo tape and a demo before your first album; how did the music of Sammath change across these three releases?

The first demo “zwaardbroeders bij de bergengte” 1996 (brothers of the sword at the mountain pass) was really underground, bad sound, but the ideas for later SAMMATH where there. At that time I had someone else in SAMMATH, due to total lack of interest I kicked him out. The music at that time was heavily inspired by early Emperor and Satyricon, not even close to their level of songwriting but the atmosphere on the tape was good. The second demo/promo tape “de ruines fluisteren (the ruins whisper) was a full length demo with eight tracks varying from fast black metal to old style black metal. Both these tapes are four track recordings. From the first demo to the release of the cd “strijd” their was only a improvement on the sound, the music grew as it should but did not change much in style. The only difference being that it started to sound more original, the SAMMATH sound.

How is the new album different from Strijd?

Verwoesting/devastation is more violent in every way. The keyboard is gone and the music is faster. The tracks are of better quality as is the recording. There are also more death metal influences, after seven years of pure black metal it was time to evolve. I spend two years on this cd, everyday two or three hours. I finally had the opportunity to work with Fridus Klaasen a great producer. He does not have any connection to the metal scene and usually just masters classical music. This way you get a fresh sound, not like all bands who record in well known studios. The lyrics are no longer about dark forests and so on but realistic, war, death, questions upon faith. The whole concept is more brutal, every musician always prefers the latest album, go listen to the tracks and compare yourself. The music has evolved from being a rip off of other bands to a SAMMATH sound.

What do you think of mp3 trading (Napster, WinMX, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy); has it helped or hindered the underground?

I think it helps in one way, everyone can hear your music. Problem is that less people buy albums, the value of a cd is just no longer what it was because of the easy way to copy a cd but the prices remain the same. I am not in it for the money; that’s pretty obvious or I would have been writing pop music but I don’t see why everyone should get everything for free, if you like the album buy it. If noone buys albums there will be no more scene. On the other hand, there are so many releases that are not that good at all that you want to listen to but not buy. Folter records has told me he has had no problems. I believe that the older generation still buys what they want. What I like is vinyl, the best sound for metal.

What things do you love? Hate? Do most things fall in between?

I hate everything that has to do with religion, satanists are just as pathetic as christians, anyone who needs to be part of a group is just weak. I also hate the political talk within the scene. A couple of years ago those right wingers tried to get into the house/ trance scene, those people didnt want it so they thought, lets go and try the black metal underground. Not much falls between. Love is not really much of an inspiration for this music. Hate turns to music.

Is belief, or logic, more powerful to you?

Belief is emotions and not realistic, except if you want a life as a priest so you can get through life without having to face reality and you get to meet al sorts of nice little kids. Feeling though is a big part of SAMMATH, hate, war. Belief stands for weakness and self made comfort to get through life believing heaven is their for you, the truth is you die, get buried and rot. If we are all god’s children then our father is a ruthless bastard. He probably listens to metal.

What do you see as the differences between black metal and rock music?

Probably the state of mind of those involved. I think rock musicians think money earlier. Black metal has more passion. We evolved from rock music to metal to even faster. Rock music is written for a large audience and black metal however you want it to be.

Which were your earliest influences in black and death metal?

The earliest influences are not at all black or death metal, too numerous but Coroner, Mortal Sin, Rose tattoo, Slaughter (Fuck Of Death), Autopsy, early Cannibal Corpse. Mostly local Australian rock/metal bands that I saw live. I still get very pissed off when I hear anything from the mighty Autopsy. The earliest black metal would be Gehenna, Satyricon. Celtic Frost, Hellhammer. Good thing about Celtic Frost and Hellhammer is that you can play along pretty quick and just stand their headbanging to frost tracks, gives you a good boost, “I can play this shit!”, then improvise my own riffs over the originals on the LP. I think I listened to the same bands as everyone who is now near to thirty years old.

You are referring to Sammath’s music (on the site) as being “furious black death metal.” How do you conceive of the unifying factors behind the labels we use for music and other things? is black metal an ideology, a musical style, an attitude or an artistic style only?

We have to label music, even if we don’t agree with the term. Everything needs a name so that people can place it somewhere. It is so damned pathetic but mankind needs labels for everything. I created the furious black death metal mainly for the t-shirt design. I thought it fits the music well. Some people agree some dont, who cares. Black metal is whatever i want it to be. It’s all that you mentioned above and more. Everyone has different ideas about black metal. I try not to get involved in all that discussion about what is true or not. Foremost black metal should be just a artistic style. Some people get so worked up about how it all should be, I don’t give a shit who does what as long as its fast and brutal. A lot of people look very evil but have no idea what they are on about.

It seems to me these days people are negative about nationalism for the most part, but I always think they have patriotism and nationalism confused. After all, nationalism used to mean pride one’s specific tribe or culture, and didn’t have much to do with the flag-waving and Iraq-bombing we see these days. What are your thoughts on this?

Its going to get worse, wait till the USA and Europe split in about ten to fifteen years. Due to the fact that the world is getting smaller and more crowded people are grabbing on to whatever they know and understand. This means that nationalism and patriotism are automatically combined. Here is the danger. Culture is also being overthrown by Nike, Coca Cola and whatever else. So every kid al over the world looks the same in their youth. When they get older they want to reunite with their culture from their own country, not liking what they stood for so the line between patriotism and nationalism fades. The whole Iraq bombing situation is just going to go on until the USA decides to listen to europe or bomb everything. It’s a great place for them to test weapons. In europe the fine line has also disappeared. You cant wear the dutch flag on your jacket because then you must be racist, as you already mentioned people are confused. “the timeless splendour of chaos”

What are your favourite sensations while creating music?

The whole process of writing music. When a track works out well and turns out the way you thought it to be. When you write music like this al is a great sensation, letting your ideas twist into brutal fast metal.

Do you listen to much metal? If so, anything notable of late?

Very much metal, lately I listen to mostly older stuff but some good new bands are Abominator from Australia, not that new but damn good, Trimonium from Germany also on Folter Records, I don’t really follow the scene as fanatically as a couple of years back. There are just too many releases. Older dutch metal bands as Sinister, Pestilence and German thrash is what I mostly listen to these days. I still have great respect for Sadistik Exekution, Destroyer 666 who still have that “fuck you” feeling in the music. The Dutch scene is growing very quickly and some good bands are starting to appear.

Do you think that popular music will ever turn toward being more like classical music?

Ha ha, not in the near future. Their is no way that popular music will evolve to anything worthwhile soon due to the fact that people dont care about the music. If it’s got tits its good. If it looks cool it’s good. Those forms of music are about as far apart as possible.

What bands do you think are most responsible for the black metal sound as we know it today?

Venom, Frost, Hellhammer, for the younger generation is would probably be cradle of filth and dimmu boring. I think the early black metal evolved differently everywhere, with its roots in the mentioned bands. Black metal in Poland has a quite different approach then the Norwegians. Those bands inspired thousands to pick up a guitar, bass or start beating on a drum kit. Mayhem and Darkthrone probably played a big part as well.

What activities do you have outside of music upon which you rely for inspiration?

Outside of music I teach history, not the teaching but history inspires me to write music in many ways. Read any account of a battle during both world wars and that should give many ideas. The vast universe gives enough to think about.

Where do you hope to take the band next? Any future evolution’s of the art form?

The next album will be recorded with a real drummer. Koos Bos is probably the fastest drummer i have ever met. I want to record the album with the band members. I play guitar so I play bass as a guitar player; that’s not good for the sound. Recording everything yourself also has its disadvantages. I want to go on tour sometime next year when i return from australia. I still have a contract for one more cd with Folter records. I am pleased with his work for Sammath and the new tracks that I have written are in the same line as “verwoesting/devastation” I want to master the art of furious black death metal.

Do you think there is an ambient or atmospheric quality to your music?

Definitely, hypnotising riffs. Not for all. It doesn’t have atmosphere as Mortiis does. I create chaos, chaos has its very own atmosphere, more straight forward in your face. Everyone burning candles and listening to ambient would probably disagree.

Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead – that is the best and most vital thing that still remains of Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity has thus crossed over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much ‘God, freedom and immortality’ that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition, and the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity.

Does it seem to you that the days are shorter
And does it seem to you that the nights seem so much longer
Well it does to me, and in time you will see
That the fate of the world is burning in fire

– Deströyer 666, Genesis to Genocide

In my visions of another age, Australia is a domain of rogues and devils, swept by sands and heat, a colony of fear. Aboriginals fight, mutated animals leap and grappling hooks are thrown from jeeps that speed with metallic roar across the wasteland. Humanity decays, but Australia preserves the instinct for survival, man against desert, taking pleasure in the primitive actions of hunting, fighting, lovemaking and getting drunk on bourbon. Nocturnal winds howl through the chasms, kangaroos leap over graves and tribal chants are raised amidst campfires as skull goblets are raised.

While I have never been to the country, the impressions of Australian black and death metal do nothing but strengthen the images of brutal frontier life. The sense of the wild is different, more internalized, almost Jack London -like, compared to the European romanticized walks in civilized Teutorburger woods or pure, silent Scandinavian nature. Australians are rebels who have tasted the whip of slavery and still remember it – with hate in their blood.

Every rock fan knows AC/DC and Nick Cave, the astonishing twin pillars that represent total opposites of image and style roleplay in hard rock. Both of them influenced heavy metal around the world, but a mainstream fan would be hard pressed to name any other Australian bands of note. I’m not going to dwell on the early 80′s, but mention some events that were triggered by the resurgent death and black metal ideas of Europe and the USA.

Australia is characterized by geographical distance from the Western pop culture trends and so, death metal didn’t happen early but it was marked by a serious intensity from the beginning. As a perfect example, we can take Armoured Angel, who with their late 80′s series of demos gradually developed from a heavy and grinding version of speed metal into a technical artillery of militantly precise death metal akin to Polish innovators Vader. Hobbs’ Angel of Death, due both to their cult reputation and connections to later more visceral bands, proved definitive with their self titled album in establishing the early death metal attitude and sound of bands like Destruction and Slayer in Down Under. Hobbs’ raw, molten hot solo bends and breaks were like burning gasoline leaking from a bullet torn hole in a fighter plane. Meanwhile, Sadistik Exekution initiated their campaign of abuse against every known musical principle, which continues up to this day.

Influenced by hardcore and speed metal, these madmen from Sydney proceeded to destroy the reputability of Australian metal with their on-stage and off-stage antics, almost becoming performance art with their macabre, sarcastic terror campaign of pure noise. Already “The Magus”, recorded in 1986, suggested that this band would dare to go where others would not, the subconscious realm of damnations and mutations, yet containing the elements within an underground death metal rhythm and riff based format. Their second and best album, “We Are Death… Fukk You!” was already something else – a noisy freakshow of an album, with the catatonic, desperate screams of Rok and nearly fusion jazz-y random blasts of violence from the strings of Rev Kriss Hades and Dave Slave. Sadly, their later albums mostly devolved into using the madness as a gimmick instead of a mode to express actual items of perception.

The next generation produced more self-contained music but it also showed the blooming of the world wide death metal presence, as we are talking about the days when death metal was at its commercial heights, ’91-’93. Many bands wanted to be like their big brethren in Florida, as a shameful but popular example let’s mention Mortification, who aped the thrashy sound of early Death with some of the complex rhythms of Obituary or Suffocation, yet infiltrating the standard gore text with reborn Christian propaganda, which had a widespread presence in Australian metal at large. Meanwhile, a band like Anatomy, whose elegant use of melody as texture, akin to Swedish bands like Grave or maybe even At the Gates, remained unknown to most death metal fans. Anatomy’s constructions weren’t altogether as brilliant, but as with many Norwegian early death metal bands, it was a breeding ground for musicians and ideas that would fully develop into a wave of satanic, intense war metal. And if you read the diSEMBOWELMENTreview we published some time ago, you already know that they were able to built a transcendentally blissful temple of Zen-like tranced out death metal from the simple basis of combining British style grindcore with British style doom.

The acid, sex and Satan obsessed wave of barbaric war metal, ca. 1994, was again closer to the sardonic “fighting man’s black metal” attitude of Beherit, Blasphemy and Impaled Nazarene, than Norwegian “top hat black metal”. This means that Bestial Warlust (“Vengeance War ’til Death”), Deströyer 666 (“Violence is the Prince of This World” and “Unchain the Wolves”) and Gospel of the Horns (“The Satanist’s Dream”) used Sarcofago and Destruction as templates to unleash a torrent of riffs which could have been untuned Motörhead on 45 rpm, emphasized by an artillery of ambient drumming to evoke images of blooddrenched hordes and endless streams of bombers. I remember how back in the day these bands were even widely detested in zines documenting the black metal phenomenon, but they proved crucial to bands which around the turn of the millennium clad in bullet belts and started wearing gas masks in “war metal” revival’s endless stream of clones.

All this might have you thinking that the Nordic and Romantic styles of black metal were obsolete in Australia, but this was not to be the case. Abyssic Hate (whose “Cleansing with an Ancient Race” was a perfect match for the Immortal related Det Hedenske Folk on their split album) intended to capture the harsh poetry of Burzum and Ildjarn. Later material was somewhat unsuccessful because of humanocentric (“suicidal”) terminology, despite ambient leanings in songwriting. Nazxul was the Australian counterpart to mysticist bands like Nåstrond or Osculum Infame, whose cloaked, symbolic stage presence was a source of controversy. Theatrical, esoteric and arrogant, Nazxul did not fail to clothe oblique satanism in suggestive and venomous fury, at times surprisingly cerebral – especially on the mini-album “Black Seed”. Samain‘s “Indomitus” recalled some of Enslaved‘s and Graveland‘s explorations in long songs influenced by folk and classical music, wandering through interludes and heavy, thunderous, emotional modes as if paralleling the documented trials of the ancient Indo-European tribes, whose mythological symbolism filled the lyrics.

Gradually, we can note the presence of all the international metal trends and hypes increasing in Australia, filling the continent with meaningless bands. It would be a lie to say that the random band you hear from Australia is up to anything good. But there’s some you might like to hear. Asphyxia is a young technical death metal band, influenced by Nile, Kataklysm and the rest of the champions of convoluted hyperspeed – they are bit in love with the Necrophagist digital treachery fashion but they have room to develop and the players definitely deserve applause for their instrumental excursion. Midnight Odyssey uses oceanic layers of slow melody to transform black metal to a landscape of dark clouds, using keyboards in the evocative manner familiar from Schulze and Summoning. The best of the epics on “Firmament” rediscover a youthful, hopeful beauty that hasn’t been too fashionable in the image and commodity oriented latter days of black and death metal. Nazxul, who sadly lost a vital member to a motorcycle accident, released in 2009 their possible magnum opus, the immense “Iconoclast” which has established itself as one of my top black metal choices of the year despite initial skepticism towards the more standard imagery and vocabulary employed on the surface. Suggestively classical and elegant, as Emperor and Avzhia did it, Nazxul praise the unliving and the unknown with a Bach-ian playful sonority, adding themes, keyboards and guitar leads to basically simple songs the same way an alchemist adds prime materials to his boiling tincture of salvation. It is all, and much more, than most of Funeral Mist (and their ilk) tried to achieve with their experimental norsecore.

The old horde is still going strong, of course, as I got the initial inspiration for this writeup when interviewing Deströyer 666 (now based in Netherlands and the UK) elsewhere. With their latest album “Defiance”, they continue to quote the metal history all the way back to Judas Priest and the NWOBHM and this was of course much enjoyed by this writer even though it would be false to say that they would have reinvented, or even surpassed, their old selves in any manner. The scene is still brimming with offshoots of Anatomy and Bestial Warlust, such as Ignivomous, who on “Death Transmutation” have definitely listened their Incantation and Immolation, not without streamlining them to a more generic barbaric noise approach though, and Razor of Occam, whose “Homage to Martyrs” updates the violence of Sodom and Kreator to a new generation yet again, as wolves surrounding the throne room of Absu who stumbled and diluted their ancient black thrash in favor of “progressive” stylings that mostly only pleases reviewers in Terrorizer.

I know that mortals’ ears are already bleeding, but it’s impossible to escape this topic without mentioning a few curiosities from Adelaide group of total nutcases, starting the cult old school death metal band Martire back in the early 90′s. The early demos and EP’s have been re-released multiple times. Since that, members who call themselves “The Great Righteous Destroyer” and “The Serpent Inquisitor” have continued to baffle the hapless headbangers with one after the other more indescribable and twisted songs. Stargazer‘s Lovecraftian, off-center and racing death metal is what I personally consider the flagship band, whereas Cauldron Black Ram grooves like a joint venture of Celtic Frost and Running Wild members (in concept also). Misery’s Omen paints a hyper-dramatic curtain of dreamy black metal resembling Samael and a krautrock band on an endless bad acid trip, describing “Desolate Winds of Mars”, “Antarctic Ice Chasms” and other spectacles of consciousness awaking to the immense possibilities offered by nature itself, impersonal, cold but beautiful.

Gather ’round all you fire-starters
Whirlwind reapers and comet riders
Come to our mountain hall
Come and heed the call

In the late 1980s/early 1990s in the expansive United States, the nascent genre of death metal developed multiple strains. The more accessible of them included the well-known, technically-impressive bands from the scenes in New York and Florida, respectively. A third major bloodline, arising from the likes of early Morbid Angel, Necrovore and Possessed found itself in darker territory, more readily embracing deep occult themes with palatable atmospheres of musical evil to match. Imprecation, hailing from Houston, Texas, were among the early participants in this subgenre, helping carry it to its mature phases in the mid-1990s along with acts like Incantation and Fallen Christ. The bands’s 1995 discography-to-date release, Theurgia Goetia Summa, is a succinct statement of death metal’s ability to inspire moral horror that reaches beyond the banal graphic fantasy often associated with it.

Answers by vocalist David Herrera.

What was forming a death metal band like, back in the early days before people really knew what death metal was? How did you explain it to people, and how did they react?

It was kinda strange, the whole “Earache” scene was starting to gain momentum, and yet there was an even ‘darker’ undercurrent that was gnashing it’s teeth into the throats of Christians. This is the cauldron that we bubbled out of! It was very unknown at the time, especially with everything being heard solely through tape trading or if you were lucky an underground radio program that would turn you on to bands that were only existing on word of mouth such as Incantation, Profanatica, Impaled Nazarene, Beherit, Phlebotomized, Demigod, Archgoat, and more. We had a radio program here in Houston called “Sweet Nightmares” airing on Tuesday nights/Wednesday mornings from midnight to like 4 am, hosted by Wes Weaver and Bill “the Master” Bates. We’d stay up out in the woods with lots of acid and alcohol and make bonfires to this radio program to check out all of the unknown stuff that they would turn us on to, it was such a drag when it stopped airing as this was a weekly ritual for us. I remember the first time I heard the new extreme in the underground, it was on this show in ’89 or ’90 and Wes had just got the advances from Earache of Morbid Angel’s “Maze of Torment” and Terrorizer’s “After World Obliteration”. He played them back to back and it completely floored us. That ‘s when I knew that I had to be creating this music, to actually live it!

I understand that two members came from the Kreator-y/Slayer-y “Dark Reign.” What caused them to make such a stylistic jump to greater extremity and darkness?

Well, Dark Reign were such a repected band in Houston, really no one was nearly as extreme as they were when they were around. To find out that I was gonna be in the same band as the main songwriters, well I could not believe it. It was like going from the pit to the stage in one swoop, I really lucked out to have my first official band to be rounded out with guys who took their craft seriously. I always felt that the “Ceremony of the Nine Angles” (NOT ANGELS! people to this day seem to think we misspelled this haha!) demo had a lot of Dark Reign and Undertaker (which was basically what Imprecation morphed out of) all over it. Basically I came in as a guitarist, they heard my vocals and decided they wanted me to contribute that way instead. The darkness was honed through some of the lyrics that i brought to the table, although Ruben and Phil were already some dark motherfuckers. I just let them know that if I was gonna be their vocallist, i wasn’t singing politics or government or anything of the kind, not that there is anything wrong with that. But my love lies in utter darkness, and blasphemy is my scripture.

What were the influences on early Imprecation, and did these change over time?

eh, basically it was more that we were inspired by certain bands, and these inspirations remain firm almost 20 years later. Phil came to me when we actually started to piece together our first song “Blinded” and said he was really bitten by the sound coming out of Sweden at that time, most notably Entombed and Carnage. I was always a big fan of Nihilist, so I completely understood! He’s also a big Hellhammer/Celtic Frost fan, along with Dark Angel and Possessed, so I think that is where we got our music stylings guitarwise from, kinda a mixture of those styles. Ruben has a drum style completely all to his own, Ben Falgoust once said that you could make a comp with a hundred bands on it and throw a project with Ruben involved and he could pick his drums out of the lot. I totally agree 100%! I once asked Ruben what made him tick, and he just basically said he was a big John Bonham and Keith Moon fan, as well as a fervant supporter of Mercyful Fate, Slayer and Exodus. To this day he definitely marches to his own drum beat heh heh. My vocal stylings were born of early Morbid Angel, Blasphemy, Beherit, and Immolation worship. Also a healthy dose of early Deicide, I always dug Benton’s approach especially on the self titled LP and “Legion”.

What is good?–Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil?–Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness?–The feeling that power increases–that resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?–Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak–Christianity…

– F.W. Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888)

Theurgia Goetia Summa is most often compared to early Incantation, with a healthy infusion of early Morbid Angel. Did these bands influence you at all, or do you think you hit on a style that’s inherent in metal?

eh, Incantation is fuckin killer but I’d be lying if I told you they were an influence. I was a big fan, and still very much am, but they never came into the equation when we were writing any of our material. I saw them on their tour with Anal Cunt, supporting their “Entrantment of Evil” 7inch and their “Unholy Massacre” cassette at both the Pik n Pak and the Axiom and let me tell you, in 1990 it was a unheard of to see a band of their magnitude live. At least down here in Texas. Also in that same year we saw Morbid Angel on their “Altars of Madness” tour, with heh heh, you guessed it, Dark Reign supporting their Texas shows. I cannot deny the impact that performance had on my life, and what that album plus their “Abominations….” album did for us muscially, but as I said before it was pure INSPIRATION. I feel to this day that Imprecation were on to something special and original, especially with the “Sigil of Baphomet” ep and the Mark Beecher fronted ‘deathymns’ (A.S.!) that started the first three tracks on “Theurgia Goetia Summa”. Even when Mark took ’em in a more black metal direction it still had that Imprecation low tuned crush that made us easily identifiable!

What, in your view, is the difference between black metal and death metal, if any?

Well if you are talking about pure negligent praise of moral destruction and the end of life as we know it, there is no real difference. But that is where it stops when talking as a genre in it’s entirety. I always felt that true Black Metal was very focused on atmosphere and infernal aesthetics, kinda like a funeral shroud that draped around your being, candles lit and pure Satan worship whether Satan existed as a deity or a form of negativity. True Death is more embracing the soil, the musk of things decayed, the creak of a coffin lid, the chop of an axe, and focused on bringing it to you in a very unforgiving and pummeling assault to the senses. I prefer when either style mixes a little flavor of the other to make it a grand combination of destruction. That is where I think Imprecation succeeded most of all, through a perfect balance of Death and Black. Bands like Archgoat, Necros Christos, Teitanblood, Katharsis, Incantation, Watain, and Portal bring this type of rotting stench to my speakers! Death Metal that is as pitch black as a bottomless pit, falling through the infinite abyss…..

Do you think that metal bands, like indie bands, need to develop a “persona” that they support with a unique lingo, habits, styles of dress and mannerism, etc?

Sometimes it is okay to have something that can bring identity to one’s stylings, you know to give ’em that certain trait that makes them all their own. Venom, Voivod, Sadistik Exekution, Hellhammer/Frost, Carnivore, Judas Priest, Blasphemy, Bolt Thrower, Mayhem/Darkthrone, Misfits, W.A.S.P. hell; even Manowar whom I fuckin hate had something that made them stand on their own. I don’t think a band has to develop it’s own original persona or sound to succeed, however, but it definitely helps when they have CONVICTION in their musical execution!

You (David Herrera) also write and perform for Bahimiron, a gutter-vicious Gorgoroth/Motorhead-styled black metal band. What’s the difference in your songwriting there, as opposed to when working with Imprecation?

Huge difference. Where Imprecation focuses on getting most every note played with tightness and clarity, we in Bahimiron believe in being akin to “an eyeball loose and wild”. We embrace death and the devil, and are at one with ways of alcohol abuse and loaded firearms. Heh heh I know a certain someone who does not embrace our love for whiskey and the such, maybe “misguided” in our directions (I’m looking at you, Mr. Prozac!) but none-the-less it is how we live. As the Electric Hellfire Club once proudly displayed on an album “Drugs, Death and the Devil”. It is not for everyone, but when we proclaim that we are Whiskey Fueled Black Metal it is not in a “party” attitude, rather a result of the harm that this way of life can do to one’s self or to any who get in the way!

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.

– William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

If sound is like paint, and we use different techniques and portray different things in our paintings, what does it say when a genre sounds similar and has similar topic matter and imagery? Can the genre be said to have a philosophy or culture of its own?

I think that sounds about correct. I mean, that is how cults are born, a group of individuals who try to accomplish the same goals, missions, or end results. I think as far as true death and black metal it definitely qualifies, especially if one lives it’s message as a completely dedicated lifestyle.

Like in the late 1970s, metal feels to many people like it has lost direction and become hollow. Is a change in direction needed, and if so, will that come from within metal?

Well it depends. I like my metal true to form, and if you start mixing techno or emo punk into it then it is complete shit in my ears and I could give a fuck if that is the new “saviour” of metal. I mean, look at the nu metal scene. And by that I am not talking Korn, I am talking Killswitch Engage or Job For A Cowboy. If that is the change needed to bring metal to a different plateau, then I’ll stay in the valley with my old standbys. I still put in my “Seven Churches”, “Reign In Blood”, “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”, or “Fallen Angel of Doom” records KNOWING how many bands aped these styles, and it still summons the demon abyss from my speakers. Even the bands that border on plagerism of these styles score high points with me as compared to what some idiots are calling death or black metal nowadays. I’d rather hear a Blasphemy rip off than God Forbid any day!

Did you learn music theory? Did it help you or slow you down in achieving your musical goals? If not, did musical illiteracy help or hinder you?

No. I do not think that one needs music theory to create music. As a matter of fact i think when one knows TOO much about their instrument, it fails to “wow” me and the end result is total boredom. I get more out of a band who are shaping their music through pure devotion to make it work with the skills or lack of skills that they have than a band who is worried if they are playing in 4/4 time or how many diminished triads they can pull off in a measure. All the music theory I need lies in my record collection.

It has been observed that death metal and black metal use “narrative” composition, where a series of riffs form a sort of poem that tells a story about a change in states of mind. Is this reflected in your songwriting at all?

I’d like to think so. I mean, that has always been the appeal for me through a lot of metal: where are the instruments taking me? I need passageways to form lyrics to, sometimes a narrow corridor covered in blood will do, other times an ocean of blood with floating corpses does my mind good. Some people write their lyrics before music, I write my lyrics THROUGH the music. I let the Devil take my mind, and the instruments guide my pen to paper. Most lyrix i have writ were on the first stab.

Do you think a genre of unpopular “popular music” like death metal and/or black metal can be a form of art? What distinguishes art from entertainment, and if they overlap, is there a difference in goals between the two?

Absolutely. What seperates the two? Art succeeds from the within, damn the outsider’s opinion. Entertainment comes with the ideals that for it to succeed, you must please a group of people whether large or small. I think it is possible to be a bit of both, as when we write music we do it for ourselves firstly, but we do care if our message poisons the right people. I mean, if you really did not care if your music or art was embraced by anyone then why release it? Now, it does not bother me if we get negative response, if we wanted to be liked by all then we would be involved in a band hunting for a major label and become a tool for their bank accounts. That is where it ceases being art, and falls strictly into the “please the sheep” category!

Have the values of metal music changed from the early 90s? How and why?

Somewhat. Like I mentioned earlier, there are kids that really think these bands like Unearth are Death Metal. Pathetic.

Are there any skills you have learned from being a death metal band that can be applied to other areas of life?

eh, the only time it was a benefit for me was when I worked in the field of Demolition. Now I am a construction foreman, and i don’t think that really applies to the fine art of fuckin shit up!

Imprecation has just reformed after a dozen years absent, and now you’re opening for Mayhem. How does that feel? Where are you going next?

It feels great man. It feels natural that our first show back is gonna be with Mayhem and Marduk onstage. I mean, our very first show as a band was in early 1992 opening for Grave/Massacre and the very next one was opening for Entombed/Exhorder, so we are used to “breaking the ice” on a big stage. We have a real killer show planned in June with Father Befouled and Thornspawn, and we will be playing in Mexico in August and New York in December with some killer bands.

Is that live recording that made it to tape ever going to see a general release? What about a re-release of TGS?

No. It was only a small production, never meaning to be an official Imprecation release. If you got one, cool, but it stops at that cassette as far as our involvement with it. As far as Theurgia Goetia Summa, it will be re-released this summer on Die Todesrune records in Spain. The original release never gave proper credit to Phillip or myself. I mean, Phil wrote the music to at least 6 of those songs and my lyrics and vocals were on 6 of the nine tracks to no mention. Everyone who don’t know us think that Mark Beecher does all the vocals, when his vocal contribution stops after the third song. From then on it’s me, and Phil is playing the guitar on everyone of the Sigil of Baphomet and Ceremony tracks as well. So that’s gonna be re-released and also we have a killer new 7 inch that has been recorded on Negativity Records that will be entitled “Sigil of Lucifer”, to be released this summer.

We appreciate your spending so much time on these questions, and know it’s going to be important information in the underground. If you have anything else to add that we were too dumb to ask, please stick it here.

Thanks Herr Prozak for the interview. Hails and horns to ANUS.com, and to all affiliated with its writings!!

Here and NOW is our day of torment! Here and NOW is our day of Joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth. Every attempt made to organize the future must necessarily collapse. The present is our domain, and our chief duty is to take immediate possession thereof upon strict business principles. Strive therefore against them that strive against you, and war against them that war against thine. Lay hold of shield and buckler or their equivalents; stand up! Be a terrible one in thine own defense. Raise up also the clenched hand, and stop the way of them that would persecute you. Say unto thine own heart and soul: “I, even I, am my own redeemer.” Let them be hurled back into confusion and infamy, who devise thine undoing. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone, and let the Angel of Death pursue them, nay, overtake them. In a pit they have hidden a trap for thy feet; into that very destruction let them fall. Then, exultant, “sound the loud timbrel”. Rejoice! Rejoice! in thine own salvation. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully, “Who is like unto me? Have I not delivered myself by mine own brain? Have I not been to strong for mine adversaries? Have I not spoiled them that would have spoiled me?”